Iran has been seeking to establish that it is the hegemonial power in the Middle East. Its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gave an interview to the Iranian daily Ressalat on July 7, 1991, and asked a rhetorical question: "Do we look to preserve the integrity of our land, or to we look to its expansion?" He then answered his own question: "We must definitely look to expansion.” And indeed, in the years that followed, Iranian forces have been involved in regional subversion from Lebanon to Saudi Arabia and most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Khamenei's spokesman, Hossein Shariatmadari, wrote...