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Realigning U.S. Policy to Support Iran Is Illogical

(Tablet) Lee Smith - Minimizing the U.S. footprint in the Middle East was seen to require partnership with a power that could bear the load after America's exit. Supporters of the Iran deal realigned American interests with those of the Islamic Republic, overturning the traditional American alliance system. But this realignment was a geopolitical protection racket. The thinking behind it was also wrong, since Iran can't carry the load in the Middle East. It is the theocratic state of a regional minority twice over, Persian and Shiite, whose exterminationist campaigns against Sunnis have rendered it incapable of projecting influence in a Sunni-majority Middle East. Iran wages asymmetrical war through proxies because it has very limited military capabilities of its own. Even with the hundreds of billions that came to Iran after the JCPOA, Iran needed Russian support to put down Syrian rebel forces. Even the most elementary premise of realignment is illogical. It means overturning the existing U.S. alliance system of pro-American states in the Middle East in favor of embracing a genocidal regime that at its core is virulently anti-American. The writer is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
2019-09-23 00:00:00
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