Obama is helping Iran

Posted By Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett Wednesday, February 23, 2011 - 8:17 PM Share

We take billionaire financier George Soros up on the bet he proffered to CNN's Fareed Zakaria this week that "the Iranian regime will not be there in a year's time." In fact, we want to up the ante and wager that not only will the Islamic Republic still be Iran's government in a year's time, but that a year from now, the balance of influence and power in the Middle East will be tilted more decisively in Iran's favor than it ever has been.

Just a decade ago, on the eve of the 9/11 attacks, the United States had cultivated what American policymakers like to call a strong "moderate" camp in the region, encompassing states reasonably well-disposed toward a negotiated peace with Israel and strategic cooperation with Washington: Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the other Persian Gulf states, as well as Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey. On the other side, the Islamic Republic had an alliance of some standing with Syria, as well as ties to relatively weak militant groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. Other "radical" states like Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Muammar al-Qaddafi's Libya were even more isolated.

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DR. SARDONICUS

10:49 PM ET

February 25, 2011

Is that all you got?

With respect to the Leveretts’ thesis (barring the “Obama is Bad” kneejerk), two alternatives present themselves.

Iranian influence may increase. Like reactionaries everywhere, the mullahs will make sure that anyone with a brain will be barred from power. And, like Republicans who held power in the USA, they will thereby fall flat on their face. Heightened influence will merely give them license to shoot themselves in the foot; that’s what they do best.

Otherwise, Iranian influence will be thinned by the perpetual musical chairs of Turkish, Iranian, Sunni and Shia Arab power groups, and the viral shift of their mercenary satellites that permits no outside analysis more than a year or two’s relevance and accuracy, and that may validate almost any schmo’s prediction, if only for a year or two.

Meanwhile, the USA, the EU and China will sit on the sidelines, fishing for puppets to manipulate – that audience of deep pockets and massed firepower being the only element of this game that has changed for the last thousand years. Big. Deal.

The only thing the populations of these four primary players hate worse than their own government and each other, is Israel. By sheer numbers, by sheer attrition, and with the passage of merciless time, Israel as currently established is doomed. So is U.S. Mid East policy, as long as ankle-chained to that big fat liability. Improvise, adapt and evolve; or die the slow death of hubris, magical thinking and dull brains.

Speaking of which, I am struck by the intellectual sterility revealed in this article and its appended comments. Are we doomed to choose between the simple-mindedness of Neocons or that of “Obama is Bad” reactionaries, with nothing more sophisticated on offer? Is that bathos the sum total of creativity and savvy within and without the concrete-lined Beltway?