Yeah, I know. “Fox News”, right? But one of the reasons Iran is so mysterious is because US and other western leaders don’t know what the regime’s leadership is thinking, much less that they’re obsessed with the “end times.”

“The Evil Has Landed” screamed the New York Daily News. “NYers In Rage over ‘Tehran’ting Lunatic” exclaimed the New York Post. (Why not “‘Iran’ting Lunatic”?) Overall, it was a week of ugly intolerance for even the idea of discussion. Apparently some things are out of bounds even to talk about, and allowing the Iranian president to present his views was well beyond the pale.

Which is a shame, considering how necessary Iran is to the United States’ plans in the Middle East. Iran is a major power that has its own interests which could be brought in line — a little, at least — with America’s. So, just to be a little bit naughtier than the New York tabloids, let’s talk about an idea that’s probably beyond discussion. Given the charges that Iran is on the march across the Middle East, is looking to “take it over” and drive the United States back into its own hemisphere what’s so bad about Iranian hegemony?

To answer that question, we first have to ask a more basic one: What does Iran really want? Most observers, including the noted Iran scholar Vali Nasr, believe Tehran wants Washington to accept Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Persian Gulf as its “near abroad” — “a zone of influence in which Iran’s interests would determine the ebbs and flows of politics unencumbered by American interferance.” Tehran also wants its presence in in Syria and Lebanon recognized.

It’s not like it’s never happened before. More than 2,500 years ago, Persia was the world’s first superpower and threatened Greece for its upstart refusal to bow to Xerxes, king of kings. Its empire stretched from the Ganges to Macedonia — the greatest empire the world had known. Rich and powerful, it brought culture and civilization to millions. It wasn’t an enlightened rule and Xerxes was a tyrant, but neither was it as bad as it could have been; subject people had considerable autonomy. (The Phoenicians, for example, were particularly nettlesome for the Persians, given they were the best sailors around and more or less ran the Persian navy in the Mediterranean. An invasion of Sicily was scuttled because the upstart Levantines decided they didn’t feel like doing it. Sicily never fell into the Persian orbit.)

Today’s Iran is, of course, a different thing. The knee-jerk response among the neo-conservative Norman Podhoretz set is that they’re a terrorist regime, so screw ‘em. But it’s a bad idea to dismiss Iranian concerns over their influence in a region where they have traditionally had a great deal of sway. Imagine if someone tried that with, say, Latin America and the U.S. So again, what would be so bad about Iranian hegemony or, more accurately, the accommodation of Iranian interests and influence throughout the region? Can working with the Iranians instead of against them be a form of diplomatic jujitsu?

First of all, Iran already has more influence in Iraq and Afghanistan than America does. Especially in Iraq, it’s got more chips in the game and more players on the field, able to move them at will and check American ambitions to turn Iraq into a friendly bulwark against Iran. (Under Saddam Hussein it was an unfriendly bulwark against Iran.) But if President Bush continues on his quest to reformulate his Middle East policy as one that promotes stability instead of democracy, the U.S. and Iran will have a joint interest.

“The Iranians are very eager to replace the United States as a regional leader,” says Trita Parsi, an Iranian specialist and author of “Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States.” “But that’s not necessarily bad news.”

Much of American policy in the Middle East has been a zero-sum, balance of power arrangement, where the U.S. supported regimes such as Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, while Iran backed Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian territories. Each country is the leader of its own bloc of allies, but it’s a costly form of leadership, Parsi says, because it doesn’t allow for any kind of collective security like you find in Europe. And while he admits the Middle East is “a long, long way from that, so was Europe in 1945, but we did it.” War between European states is now inconceivable.

“The balance of power has created wars,” he says. “There hasn’t been peace in the region.”

Instead of attempting to lead rival blocs against one another, the U.S. should work with Iran to take its interests into account while at the same time demanding changes in behavior for that accommodation. For instance, in exchange for allowing it a large degree of influence in Baghdad and Lebanon, Washington could demand that Iran cease its military support for Hamas in Gaza and work to disarm Hezbollah so that it could turn into a full member of Lebanon’s political culture.

The losers in such an arrangement? Israel and Saudi Arabia, mostly. American and Israeli positions would no longer automatically be the law of the land, he says. “The Israelis would not be able to impose unilateral peace deals on the Palestinians.” And that, too, is a good thing in the long run. Instead of dictating peace terms to a resentful people, Israel would be forced to deal with the Palestinians on a more equal level. And a less aggressive Israel would take the wind out of the sails of the more militant anti-Israeli groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, who draw much of their support for their anti-Israeli stance.

Saudi Arabia would lose because when it’s not allied with the United States to contain Iraq, it’s trying to counter Iran. A U.S. and Iranian rapprochement means Riyadh can say goodbye to some of those sweetheart arms deals.

It should be noted that a similar arrangement with Iran was offered, by Iran, in 2003. Iran offered to end military support for Hezbollah and Hamas and work to stabilize Iraq in exchange for an end to hostility from the U.S. and an end to sanctions. The State Department was reportedly keen to followup on the offer, but Vice President Dick Cheney nixed it.

So while there’s no easy answer or path forward to working with Iran, accepting that they have legitimate interests in the region could go a long way toward calming the place down. But Iran has to accept that the U.S. has interests, too, and those need to be taken into account as well. If the U.S. steps away from the zero-sum politics of the last 28 years, then Iran has a responsibility to do so as well.

*[Originally appeared on Spot-on.com](http://www.spot-on.com/archives/allbritton/2007/09/iranian_hegemony_whats_not_to.html)*.

Melik Kaylan writes a fawning piece on Ahmad Chalabi for the _Wall Street Journal_’s op-ed page, calling him the “nearest thing Iraqis currently possess to a genuine walk-and-talk democratic politician.” For many Americans, that may be hard to stomach, as the guy has been roundly criticized for peddling false WMD information to eager listeners at the Pentagon. (He once said, “As far as we’re concerned we’ve been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. … We are heroes in error.”) In Chalabi’s views, everything would have been hunky-dory in Baghdad if the Americans had just let the Iraqis run the show, presumably with him in charge. (Which was pretty much the plan until those meddlin’ State Department kids showed up.) Furthermore, without once mentioning that Chalabi is Shi’ite himself, Kaylan says Chalabi recognizes the realities of Iraq and its ethnic makeup, admitting that Shi’ites will be dominant. Well, other than Sunni insurgents, does anyone really dispute that? Kaylan seems to have been snookered by Chalabi, who thrills Iraqis by wandering amongst the people. Admirable yes, but Chalabi has almost zero support in Iraq and perhaps the reason he’s able to walk and talk relatively safely in public is because no one takes him seriously anymore.

The quote from Chalabi that I reference can be found here, way back from February 2004.

I do think that, as a general rule — and this would go for Speaker of the House Pelosi and this apparent trip that she is going to be taking — that we don’t think it’s a good idea. We think that someone should take a step back and think about the message that it sends, and the message that it sends to our allies. I’m not sure what the hopes are to — what she’s hoping to accomplish there. I know that Assad probably really wants people to come and have a photo opportunity and have tea with him, and have discussions about where they’re coming from, but we do think that’s a really bad idea.

Fair enough. But Reps. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., Frank Wolf, R-Va., and Joe Pitts, R-Penn., “met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday.”:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2007/04/02/international/i083853D66.DTL&type=printable
The Republicans released a statement that said, “We came because we believe there is an opportunity for dialogue … We are following in the lead of Ronald Reagan, who reached out to the Soviets during the Cold War.“
_Quelle horreur!_ Dialogue? Crickets were the only response from the White House.
Again in fairness, I spoke with a source at a Western embassy in Beirut about this, and the source said the Republicans had been discouraged from going, just as Pelosi and her delegation had been. But, the source said, if a Congressional delegation is determined to go to Damascus, the U.S. embassy in Beirut would help them out. (He asked for anonymity because he’s not authorized to talk to the press — he also committed the unpardonable sin of calling Congress a “co-equal branch of government.”)
Pelosi is the highest U.S. official to visit Syria since President Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s.

“The world is also uniting to answer the *unique and urgent threat* posed by Iraq whose dictator has already used weapons of mass destruction to kill thousands.”

– President Bush, 11/23/02

“The Iraqi regime is a *serious and growing threat* to peace.”

– President Bush, 10/16/02

“The Iraqi regime is a threat of *unique urgency*.”

– President Bush, 10/2/02

There are others, from such Bush administration luminaries such as Donald Rumsfeld — “Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent … I would not be so certain” (9/18/02) — and official spokesman, Scott McClellan — “This is about imminent threat” (2/10/03).
So, once again, Bolton is just wrong: deeply, profoundly wrong. And so was I. From my perch outside the United States — I’ve been away for several years now — I had the impression that the neo-cons were diminished or on the run, that the right-wing noise machine was winding down and that American television journalism had developed a least a modicum of skepticism toward the Bush administration. (Thankfully Jon Stewart’s interview with Bolton — while gracious — was at least more hard hitting.)
Turning to Iran, he again goes on to say regime change is necessary and wanted by Iranians. “In an interview”:http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3380195,00.html with Ynetnews.com, he says:

“I think there are a lot of Iranians that are unsatisfied with the regime, I think that there is more unrest there than what people believe, I think that the government is constrained because of the fall of oil prices and there is mismanagement of the oil sector of Iran’s economy, they’ve got fewer resources to spread around to keep the populous happy.
“There’s a large Iranian diaspora that know what the situation is. So, I think that there are a lot of possibilities. It won’t necessarily be easy or quick, but that’s not to say we shouldn’t be pursuing it.
“In think it’s very close to the point where Iran will have completely indigenous mastery over the fuel sites, that is to say the point in which stopping the things from the outside will not be sufficient, so I don’t think we have much time. That’s why all these negotiations with the Europeans have played to Iran’s advantage, because time is on their side, time is not on our side.“
How can the Iranian regime be toppled?
“Well, I wish we had started four years ago, but I think through internal dissent and outside pressure, those in general terms are what we have to do.” (Emphasis added)

Are people in Washington still talking about changing the regime change in Iran? I mean, honestly? And listening to the Iranian diaspora? That worked so well with the Iraqi diaspora, as led by Ahmad Chalabi.
And finally, Bolton admits to what everyone in Lebanon already knew: That the U.S. dragged its feet in calling for a cease-fire — allowing Lebanese civilians to be slaughtered — so that Israel might have some more time to finish off Hezbollah.
As reported by the BBC, an early cease-fire, he said, would be “dangerous and misguided.“
It was only when it was obvious that the Shi’ite group would be a tougher enemy to beat that initially thought did America sign on to a cessation of hostilities.
Thank goodness his time is up.

To the south, along the curve of the coast, Hezbollah is launching Katyushas, but I’m loathe to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist’s passport, and they’ve already hassled a number of us and threatened one.

In a “follow-up post”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/2006/08/silence.php, I expanded on this, as this one comment was taken completely the wrong way by many, many right-wing blogs and publications (Such as Totten’s and the JPost.)
The beginning of my response was this:

Let’s set aside that the Lebanese Internal Security also has photocopies of our passports. The reason for the hassling and the threat was that a reporter had filmed or described either a launching site or Hezbollah positions. (I’m not sure which.) To the best of my knowledge, that’s been the extent of the hassling. I’m going to get in trouble for this, but I think it’s a reasonable restriction. This is the exact same restrictions placed on journalists by the Israeli army and by the Americans in Iraq. I don’t think threatening journalists is cool at all, and it certainly doesn’t endear me to them, but that has been the extent of Hezbollah’s interference in our coverage.

You can read the rest of it, and I hope you do, “here”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/2006/08/silence.php.

I am driven to action now by the missteps and misjudgments of the White House and the Pentagon, and by my many painful visits to our military hospitals. In those places, I have been both inspired and shaken by the broken bodies but unbroken spirits of soldiers, Marines and corpsmen returning from this war. The cost of flawed leadership continues to be paid in blood. The willingness of our forces to shoulder such a load should make it a sacred obligation for civilian and military leaders to get our defense policy right. They must be absolutely sure that the commitment is for a cause as honorable as the sacrifice.

Well, gee, forgive me if I don’t think he should be given a lot of credit. If he was so opposed to the war, why did he stay silent? Why did he sit by for three years while others “paid in blood” for what he feels is a flawed policy? It’s easy to be opposed to the war now. Why come out now? A clue is here:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s recent statement that “we” made the “right strategic decisions” but made thousands of “tactical errors” is an outrage. It reflects an effort to obscure gross errors in strategy by shifting the blame for failure to those who have been resolute in fighting. The truth is, our forces are successful in spite of the strategic guidance they receive, not because of it.

It’s a valiant sentiment to support the men and women fighting the war, and his critiques of Condi’s statement and Rumsfeld’s micromanaging is dead on. But we’ve heard all this before. Anyone following the war can see it’s being run poorly from the big office at the Pentagon and that the civilian leadership has done everything to push blame elsewhere. Again, why now? Why didn’t you say something earlier, Lt. Gen. Newbold, once you were *retired* and could without fear of retaliation? You blame others for timidity or thick-headedness. “A few of the most senior officers actually supported the logic for war. Others were simply intimidated, while still others must have believed that the principle of obedience does not allow for respectful dissent.“
And, incredibly, you go on to blame Congress and the the media.

Members of Congress — from both parties — defaulted in fulfilling their constitutional responsibility for oversight. Many in the media saw the warning signs and heard cautionary tales before the invasion from wise observers like former Central Command chiefs Joe Hoar and Tony Zinni but gave insufficient weight to their views. These are the same news organizations that now downplay both the heroic and the constructive in Iraq.

Nice, cheap shots. Republicans controlled Congress and were in lockstep with the Bushies. The Dems, as minorities, have almost no power to exercise oversight. A high-profile resignation of — oh, I don’t know — maybe the Joint Chiefs’ director of operations might have provided them some political cover to get something done. And, gee, maybe it might have gotten some attention from the media, who then might have given Zinni and others’ more weight. And now you say we downplay the heroic and the constructive. “Is this the kind of heroism you mean?”:http://www.time.com/time/archive/printout/0,23657,1174682,00.html
Don’t lecture us about heroism and constructive roles to play, Lt. Gen. Newbold *(Ret.)* You could have done something then, and you didn’t. You could have been a powerful symbol, even if you would have taken a lot of flak from your old bosses. You say officers swore an oath to the Constitution, not the men appointed above them, yet you betrayed it with your three-year silence. It’s been said that for evil to triumph, all it takes is for good men to do nothing. Well, you did nothing. You don’t get to be considered good now.