To Olog-hai, I just think with our limited resources, we cannot afford to fight the whole Islamic world. If possible, we must try to preserve a tolerable coexistence with an Iran strong enough to serve as a counterweight to a militant Sunni hegemony. The worst thing for Israel would be to face such a monolith.
Did you notice that the recently arrested son-in-law of Osama was “released” by Iran before he was arrested by the US?
Iran calls the US the “Great Satan” and Israel is only the “Little Satan,” a sock puppet for the US in the Iranian view.
Your Iranian counter-weight to the rising potential of a Sunni hegemony is an interesting idea, but does not reflect Iranian strategy. The Iranians want to finance and arm Shiite majorities and minorities in the Arab states to enable them to overthrow their Sunni royal and/or despotic rulers.
Yes Saddam was a counterweight to Iran in the 1980s, but Saddam was not “doing US bidding” (a DU/leftie framing).
The US was cynically taking steps to insure that neither Iraq nor Iran could overwhelm the other and they would weaken each other with their war of attrition.
Note that the Iran-Contra “scandal” involved the US sending high-tech arms to Iran to use AGAINST Saddam (in exchange for Iran funneling $$ through Israel to the Contras, IIRC.
Iran IS the number one threat the mid-east stability and the world economy’s primary oil source because all the other Sunni states that can afford it will embark on destabilizing nuke arms programs if Iran gets nukes and Iran has proliferated every sort of asymmetric tactical US and Israel troop-killing device it can get its hands on to Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria.
Iran was also behind the funding of the joint Syrian/North Korean nuclear reactor that the Israelis blasted in 2007.
I don’t know who is telling you these things, but “Sunni hegemony” is not the problem, and Iran along with their Sunni counterparts regards the USA as the Great Satan (and Israel as the Little Satan). And have you ever noticed how in 34 years, we have never touched Iran? in spite of them being the largest state sponsor of Islamic terrorism, and their open rhetoric against Israel (in particular here)?
Iran as an “Islamic republic” grew out of the whole Sunni radical sphere anyhow. Recall Khomeini’s tenure in the Muslim Brotherhood? A genuine quote from Sun Tzu (rather than the ersatz one from the POTUS in the article): “Hold out baits to entice your enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.” One enemy to the USA does not provide a “counterweight” to another enemy, especially when they turn out to be the same enemy.
Also note that both the Ba’athists and Muslim Brotherhood have so-called “pan-Arabism” in common (derived from “pan-Germanism” of an entity we fought in WWII). Now Iraq is exactly like Iran, not that they were really any different from Iran under Saddam: both Saddam’s constitution and the present-day Iraq’s constitution name Israel as their number-one enemy in the region.