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malaise

(268,553 posts)
Mon Jun 16, 2014, 07:47 AM Jun 2014

Good Read-The only silver lining over Iraq is rapprochement between the US and Iran-Simon Jenkins

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/16/silver-lining-iraq-rapprochement-us-iran
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Tony Blair with George Bush in 2005: 'It is near impossible to think of a single benign outcome of the 2003 invasion of Iraq – even Saddam was moderation itself compared with that coalition’s blood-thirsty reign.' Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/PA

Chaos creates strange bedfellows. Having induced shambles in Iraq and so far failed to induce shambles in Iran, America now needs Iran's help to clear up the shambles in Iraq.

Instability is the worst curse an invader can visit on a vanquished state. At such a time, any agent of stability is welcome. As in Syria and Lebanon, and now in Iraq, Iran is such an agent, and a desperate America is running to bang on its door.

Iran could be forgiven for wanting President Obama and his "finest fighting force the world has ever seen" to be grovelling and begging at its feet. How now America, it might say. How am I a mere terrorist state, an axis of evil, a jumped up nuclear wannabe? You have marched into my sphere of influence and destabilised my borders with Iraq and Afghanistan. You have imposed vicious sanctions to protect your club of nuclear states. Now you are caught in a trap of you own making, and you need my help.

There is no way the militant Sunni uprising will stray into Iran. It is most unlikely to recapture Baghdad or – what does matter to Iran – the holy Shia shrines to the south around Karbala. On the other hand, Iran might indeed agree to help in Iraq if America were to back off its ally, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. It would also appreciate less rampant paranoia about its nuclear enrichment given America's tolerance of those of Israel and Pakistan. And it would like relief from sanctions.
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The photo caption is scathing but oh so true. Saddam was a moderate to Bush and Poodle
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