Sorry to disappoint…

The Boston Globe had a good article over the weekend about the end of ISOG. Nicholas Burns told Sen. Casey’s office that “the group was disbanded in March 2007 in ‘favor of a more standard process’ of coordinating between the White House, the State Department, Defense Department, and intelligence agencies.”

A “senior State Department official” gave the Globe a slightly different version, saying that

the group was shut down because of a widespread public perception that it was designed to enact regime change. State Department officials have said that the focus of the group, known as ISOG, was persuading the two regimes to change their behavior, not toppling them.

I suspect that this maneuver might have been Burns’ way of shutting down a process that was meant to undermine diplomacy with Iran. Laura Rozen wrote in January that the ISOG was pretty busy:

U.S. officials say that multiple inter-agency meetings on Iran are going on every day under the auspices of the Iran-Syria Policy and Operations Group, and that the pace of activity has quickened. “There are so many meetings; we’re doing stuff, writing papers; actions are being taken,” said one person involved with the group. “It’s very intense.”

On top of that, it looked like the OVP was going to be running the ISOG show:

Denehy has recently told some associates that he plans to move sometime early this year to the Office of the Vice President, where he would continue to coordinate the Iran-Syria group

Just a thought.

[Via Laura Rozen. ]

Previous hot ISOG action here and here.