Thinking about Bamford's "Iran: The Next War" article

[Recursion]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/072706J.shtml

OK, so Chalabi played us. That's a given, though I hadn't connected the dots before on how badly he played us vis a vis Iran.

But this also makes me wonder: did he play Iran too? Iraq has hardly turned out the way they wanted either (I imagine there were some naive mullahs with the same sorts of wet dreams of a populace greeting them with flowers that our own neocons had -- what is it about doctrinaire conservative religious people that insulates them from operational reality so much?)

Anyways: to be blunt things in general are going for Iran nearly as badly as they're going for us. The Taliban resurgance in Afghanistan is about the worst thing that could happen to Tehran's east. Tehran's dream of an Iraq under shi'ite control linking it with Syria seem to be vanishing for the near future (though if they do get it, expect a tremendously well-armed Hezbollah within a few months of that). Even Israel's massive overreaction did not prompt the Arab league (yet) to support Hezbollah. Al Qaeda has not (yet) declared support for Hezbollah, ditto the Muslim Brotherhood. Even Hamas is not touting its fight as solidarity with Hezbollah. In short, once again, the pan-Islamic revolution will not be televised under Shi'ite leadership.

Iran has sunk a lot of blood and money (not as much as us, but then we have more of both to "spend") into Iraq in the past few months but as yet doesn't have any tangible results -- if we pull out I'm not convinced that Iran could move in and assert its interests effectively, and if they do, it seems to me that they will inspire almost as much Sunni hatred as we did (or even possibly more).

In short, our misadventure in Iraq has done nothing but put in bloody relief the conflicts inherent in the meeting point of an east-west Shi'ite axis and a north-south Sunni axis. Chalabi played on our own arrogance in Iraq -- did he play on Iran's too? And is Iran getting burned as badly as we did? Are Hezbollah and Israel acting up because they can clearly see their foreign patrons are losing their taste for controlling the land to their east? Does the Iranian government have the power over their own people to force another Iran-Iraq war (I'm convinced that is what it would take for Iran to assert control over Iraq)? Can they keep their kurdish and sunni minorities in check? (To say nothing of their turkmen populations -- that's a pool of gasoline that thankfully don't seem to have a match pointed at them right now.) This article really exposed a lot of questions to me... I wonder if our government has the resources and will to ask them?