Why the Middle East problem will not go away

The prime movers behind a good bit of the militancy and hatred in the region are the Iranian mullahs. The guys are nuts and they live to incite antipathy towards their perceived enemies. These theocrats envision a pan-Islamic Middle East from Morocco and Spain to Kashmir with Iran as the regional hegemony. They fund Hezbollah, Hamas, and a couple other less well known terrorist groups, all hell-bent on destroying Israel. Now we get Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s solution to the conflict. From the AP article:

"Although the main solution is for the elimination of the Zionist regime, at this stage an immediate cease-fire must be implemented," he said.

Ahmadinejad, who has drawn international condemnation with previous calls for Israel to be wiped off the map, said the Middle East would be better off "without the existence of the Zionist regime."

Israel "is an illegitimate regime, there is no legal basis for its existence," he said.

This crazy bastard wants to draw Israel and the US into a larger regional conflict. He is praying for an opportunity to get into the action; either through an Israeli incursion into Syria, bombing Iran’s nuclear sites, or a Shiite uprising in Iraq. Israel, for their part, cannot live with the threat of missile barrages from Lebanon any longer. The long term survival of the state requires that their northern border be secure. Indeed, Israel is actually asking for German troops to be stationed in southern Lebanon – that’s right, the Germans. You know the situation is bad if the Israelis are asking the German Army for help.

It seems to me that the only way out of this is to defang Iran. Unfortunately, our Iraqi misadventure has sapped the army to the point that military force is out of the question. The adverse side effect of which is a civil war; two of the top US generals in Iraq just admitted as much. Iraq’s Shiite population is more than willing to align with Iran and could very well end up Iran’s puppet state. A diplomatic solution is unreasonable due to the batshit insane leadership of Iran and Bush’s “Fuck the World” cowboy diplomacy. We have very few friends willing to get into a fight with Iran and we can’t do this alone.

The only thing we can do now is try to get some sort of coalition together to isolate Iran and pray that, in the meantime, things don’t get out of hand.