Iran and the Broader Middle East

As so many are already commenting on the situation in Iran, there is nothing much I can add here. What is not being recognized to the same extent is how this might signal, along with the election of a moderate government in Lebanon and the increasingly likely death of a two-state solution for the Palestinians, signal a profound re-alignment in the middle east.

It seems apparent that the reign of the Mullah's in Iran may be doomed. And it was this regime's seizing of power in 1979 ushered in thirty years thus far of radical Islam. It is difficult, I think, to overestimate the effect the collapse of this regime would have on the region.

In this month's Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg sees a possibility, though a slim one, of a future alliance between a liberalized but still irrevocably shia Iran and Israel against the threat of Sunni Arab hegemony. Yet even a much less cataclysmic realignment might offer real signs of hope in the middle-east in general, and Israel/Palestine in particular.

As Gershom Gorenberg notes, a perestroika like mellowing of the regime in tandem with a moderate regime in Lebanon is likely to do much to lessen the influence of radical groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah which have had such a destabilizing influence. So to the extent that this is a revolution and that it succeeds, it may offer real hope for the region.