by Zach Bigalke

Created on: January 10, 2007   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

Iran's Underlying Goals...
(originally posted 01 December 2006)

While reading Charles Krauthammer's December 1st op-ed piece about Iraq, I was struck with a quite-simple maxim that will ring clearly for any political-science or international-affairs student that paid even a modicum of attention in even one of his or her classes: Iraq and Iran (or, alternately, Arabia and Persia) are historical enemies with little to no vested interest in the continued security or, even, prosperity of the other state. Even before their names were codified, so alike yet so different by that altered terminal character, the two were in a continual dispute over borders, shoreline rights, or simply for the sake of blood feud. Cyrus Partovi, a professor at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, was the first to fully illuminate the extent of the collective hatred for me; as a former high-ranking official (akin to Undersecretary of State) in the pre-revolution Iranian government, Partovi lent an air of personal legitimacy that made his words resound and reverberate through my cortex.

And now, with Cyrus's dissertations reinvigorated in my memory, I read that Iraq is in need of political reform...that a military solution is too costly to ever be viable. Well, certainly the past three years have proven that fact! Ripping apart the mentality that has our elected leaders waiting for former Secretary of State James Baker to come out with his bipartisan report and subsequently the treasure chest of buried solutions, Krauthammer states that the solution to the Iraqi conflict has always been political; until Sunni, Shiite and Kurd alike have an uninhibited say in the workings of the arbitrary borders bestowed upon them by the British a century ago, there will continue to be insurgency and conflict. And, though Bush continues to loathe the admission that, much like Vietnam, Iraq cannot go forward with reconciliation and reconstruction until U.S. forces are fully removed from the region. But Krauthammer continues by stating that, with Iraq poised to turn to Syria and Iran for help, we are seeing a Pandora's box being opened that could keep Iraq de-stabilized for another several decades.

Because of their own past and present enmity concerning American foreign relations, both Iran and Syria seem willing and ready to step up in helping to resolve the ongoing civil war/unrest (call it what you wish...) in the Fertile Crescent. On its face, this appears a laudable offer of two regional powers rising

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