Bush helps boost the power of fundamentalist Iran

President George W. Bush has opened the door for Iran to make a fresh grab for power in the Middle East.

That is one result of the Bush decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein and destroy his long-term hope to dominate the region.

The American led invasion has eliminated Saddam's "buffer" against neighboring Iran and opened a vacuum for growing Iranian power. An Iran pledged to eliminate Israel and seemingly on a path toward nuclear weapons.

The very same Iran which had tossed out the American-backed Shah, held US hostages in late 1979, and humbled the greatest power on earth.

Now that Iraq splinters into religious conflict and terrorism, the American occupation has taken over the task of holding together a "buffer" against Iran.

Of course the Bush Administration hopes to isolate, undermine, and overthrow Iranian fundamentalists with possible sanctions against development of Iranian nuclear power.

Only time will tell how much of a long term boost the Bush policy gives to the very same revived Shite militant fundamentalist Iran which President Reagan had built up Saddam to oppose -- way back during the Iran Iraq war of the 1980's. (See photo above)

Ironically some who pushed for the invasion of Iraq hoped the overthrow of Saddam would open the door for revived American power in the Middle East -- some 20 years after the Iranians threw the Americans out.

For background perspective on the drive for an American "comeback," see this writer's Human Rights Justifies a March Toward War.

It is anyone's guess what will happen if and when the Americans leave Iraq. Some like Barbara K. Bodine, coordinator for post-conflict reconstruction for Baghdad and the central region of Iraq in 2003, have argued American withdrawal might actually promote internal reconciliation in Iraq.

This writer explores the growing American bipartisan consensus for withdrawal in the blog Exploding the Iraq Illusion. For exhaustive collections of online texts, see Iraq Withdrawal and Exit Plans and Insurgent Iraq, both by the Project on Defense Alternatives.

For more immediate material on the rise of Iran, see the analysis in the Los Angeles Times, excerpts below:

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2/18/06 Los Angeles Times
NEWS ANALYSIS
Iran Was on Edge; Now It's on Top
The war in Iraq has bolstered the regime's influence in the region and made it bolder.

By Megan K. Stack and Borzou Daragahi, Times Staff Writers

BAGHDAD — The Islamic government in neighboring Iran watched with trepidation in March 2003 when U.S.-led troops stormed Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime and start remaking the political map of the Mideast.

In retrospect, the Islamic Republic could have celebrated: The war has left America's longtime nemesis with profound influence in the new Iraq and pushed it to the apex of power in the region.

Emboldened by its new status and shielded by deep oil reserves, Tehran is pressing ahead with its nuclear program, daring the international community to impose sanctions. Iran is a Shiite Muslim nation with an ethnic Persian majority, and the blossoming of its influence has fueled the ambitions of long-repressed Shiites throughout the Arab world.

At the same time, Tehran has tightened alliances with groups such as Hamas, which recently won Palestinian elections, and with governments in Damascus and Beijing.

In the 1980s, Iran spent eight years and thousands of lives waging a war to overthrow Hussein, whose regime buffered the Sunni Muslim-dominated Arab world from Iran. But in the end, it took the U.S.-led invasion to topple Iraq's dictator and allow Iranian influence to spread through a chaotic, battle-torn country.

Now Iraq's fledgling democracy has placed power in the hands of the nation's Shiite majority and its Kurdish allies, many of whom lived as exiles in Iran and maintain strong religious, cultural and linguistic ties to it.