"the birth pangs of a new Middle East"... but wait, the mullahs have already declared victory!

Now that the UNSC has declared that the Israel-Hezbollah war must cease immediately (August 11, 2006), the mullahs, through their proxy army, the Hezbollah, are also declearing that they have won where it mattered. The resolute incomptence displayed by the international community, including the UN, the US, the UK and all other permutations thereof, has emboldened the warmongers in Tehran. Just listen to the suddenly awakened Mr. Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Iraq, warning last week, that Iran might encourage its "forces" (read both the Sadr and the much larger Badr groups) in Iraq to "create increased instability here." Unless, you have just returned from the dark side of the moon, where e/m waves do not penetrate, you would know that what Iraq does not need is an additional dose of "instability."

Mr. Khalilzad should know. Mr. Nouri al-Maliki, the now shiite prime minister of Iraq, hails from the Daawa party, the same group that is one of the origional progenitors of the Lebanese Hezbollah, the same group that's fighting Israel. The Israeli bull-in-a-china shop, Mr. Netanyahu, the Likud Party leader, has said that in effect, Israel has been fighting “an Iranian army division” in “a war conceived, organized, trained and equipped by Iran, with Iran’s goal of destroying Israel and its fantasy ideology of building a once-glorious Muslim empire in which we are merely the first pit stop.” (New York Times, August 13, 2006) Many would hate to agree with Mr. Netanyahu, but he has a point.

And, it is precisely this point that many, including us, have made for a long number of years. Unless, the hegemonic and fundamentalist tendencies of the Iranian mullahs are countered and effectively, we will see the "birth pangs of a new middle east", but not the kind that Dr. Rice, the US Secretary of State, wished of a new democratic middle east, but one of the mullahs' hegemony and instability in the region.