Traveling Shoes has an interesting piece on the balance of power within Iran and the pressures pushing her toward rapprochment the U.S. If the Iranian moderates can tame what little revolutionary fervor remains, and relations between us can be normalized, I think we'd quickly see Iran resume the position of ally. The Shi'ite majority of Iran (especially one that is disillusioned with the entire program of strict relgious rule) provides the natural counterweight to the worst excesses of Sunni fundamentalism, just as Iran's geographic position and petroleum wealth provide a counterweight to Iraq, and to a host of other unstable or unreliable Arab and Central Asian regimes. This sounds right to me, though I admit I'm no expert on current Persian internal politics. I think it would be to our national advantage to push the differences between the Persian and Arabic cultures and with them the rivalries between the two camps pretending to preeminence in the Muslim world. |