Excellent article.
I guess giving the bully on the block a bloody nose works.
But it works better when you do it with a left jab while holding a Louisville Slugger, menacingly in your right hand.
No, I'd say ol' Mo has been feeling his mortality of late. He started settling down when cruise missiles landed in his tent and has been quaking ever since. Combine that with the devastation of his country's economy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the capture of Saddam, the dismantling of the Taliban, the vice grip ever-tightening around Al Quaeda, etc., etc.........then I say he's out to save his skin. He has seen hard proof of what we do to regimes that cross us and wants no part of it.
IOW, it's FAR more to his benefit to play nice with the U.S. than to side with regimes that have brought nothing but death and misery upon themselves and their allies.