The Bush administration’s plan was riddled with bad assumptions, but one of the largest blind spots involved Iran. Even though Tehran’s ayatollahs had been seeking Saddam’s overthrow for more than two decades, the president and his advisers failed to think through how Iran would exploit this outcome. For its part, the C.I.A. had never prepared to challenge the ambitious plans of Iran’s security services to influence post-Saddam politics and to oppose an American occupation. The agency had been directed away from postwar planning and the focus was on the conventional war that was about to
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