Iran is winning the war on terror?

If the West is losing the Global War on Terror, as nearly all foreign policy experts now agree, who is winning? The answer appears to be Iran, according to a new report put out by Britain's preeminent think tank, Chatham House, which concludes: There is little doubt that Iran has been the chief beneficiary of the ...

If the West is losing the Global War on Terror, as nearly all foreign policy experts now agree, who is winning? The answer appears to be Iran, according to a new report put out by Britain's preeminent think tank, Chatham House, which concludes: There is little doubt that Iran has been the chief beneficiary of the war on terror in the Middle East."Iran...has now superseded the US as the most influential power [in Iraq]."

If the West is losing the Global War on Terror, as nearly all foreign policy experts now agree, who is winning? The answer appears to be Iran, according to a new report put out by Britain's preeminent think tank, Chatham House, which concludes:

There is little doubt that Iran has been the chief beneficiary of the war on terror in the Middle East."

Iran…has now superseded the US as the most influential power [in Iraq]."

Critics will rightly charge that this report overestimates Iran's ability to simply run amok in the Middle East unchecked. Israel, for instance, appears to be prepared to "slow down" Iran's nuclear program, "alone," as one Israeli official put it, if need be. And U.S. Sen. John McCain sounded all but certain on "Meet the Press" last Sunday that the United States expects a military confrontation with Iran. McCain said that economic sanctions against Iran have "got to be only the first step" in confronting Iran. Then he followed up:

Well, I think that sanctions is the first step, and let's hope that they take effect, and let's hope that the Iranians will cease all of these activities. I'm very doubtful, but we have to go through a step-by-step process.

McCain didn't say what those steps will or should be. It could be that neither he nor his colleagues know. Since the beginning of 2003, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee has held just nine hearings on Iran, compared to 32 on Iraq. That's worrisome. Because right now, the U.S. strategy on Iran sounds an awful lot like the one that got us into the mess in Iraq.

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