(Video hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)
I’ve long been of the opinion that once the U.S. State Department and other American foreign affairs powers-that-be got over the long trauma of the Iranian revolution and the “loss” of Iran, that the S’hia Muslims and historical Persians of Iran were generally better suited intellectually and emotionally to be friends of America than the Gulf Arabs of Saudi Arabia. If the very dangerous and potentially incendiary and potentially harmfully destabilizing “popular” uprising today in Iran can, against very long odds, succeed, we may very quickly find the entire arithmetic of mid-East diplomacy changed. The first place that could benefit from that new arithmetic would be Afghanistan, of course.
We must, first and foremost, of course, not be tempted to militarily intervene, regardless of how things turn out. But with a great deal of luck, a new Iranian state could emerge that would be at least as friendly to American interests, while posing some of the same ideological challenges, as today’s China or Vietnam. That would be what, I think the pundits would call, a major inflection point.
Inspirations and Aspirations 