Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Neocons Fine-Tune Iran Angle

by Khody Akhavi

".....It seems the scholars at AEI have caught on, as they have attempted to shift the focus of the debate from Iranian motivations and intentions toward an "empirical study" of Iran's influence. In the final analysis, it reflects a tactical shift away from openly beating the war drums as do scholars like Ledeen, whose most recent book is entitled The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots' Quest for Destruction, and toward an attempt to highlight the extent of Iranian influence in the region. The conclusion to be drawn is that, even without the nuclear issue at the forefront, Iran continues to exert a negative impact on U.S. interests.

By assembling an empirical study based on open-source information, the intention may be to provide a purportedly unvarnished account of Iran's ability to compete with the U.S. for hegemony in the region, to challenge the compartmentalized view of the Iran-U.S. conflict, in a debate the authors argue has been "short on facts."....."

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