Cold War?
One big reason the Cold War didn't become the most epic of disasters is that the USSR was big and powerful. Another was that, though some of our Cold War presidents were pretty nuts, they hovered for the most part at sub-Bushian levels of craziness. Neither of those facts are relevant to the U.S.-Iran standoff. That, I think, makes adds to the inherent danger of a U.S.-Iran standoff. And that's also why I'd read this article very, very skeptically.
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Comments
Although Robin Wright has done fine work in the past in bringing together the threads of thought on international problems, I too am sceptical of her reading of the Iran situaiton. It is grounded in the idea of a long-term confrontaton similar to the cold war, but Bush and Cheney have a much shorter time frame in mind, IMO.
There is one central flaw that can't be ignored by the Bushies: Being against Iran and for the Shia-dominated Iraqi government is not possible as a consistent principle. Or put another way, Iraq cannot be a bulwark against Iran (nor can the highly unstable Afghan). So containment (or green curtains) won't work there, and as Wright points out, the other Shia strongholds in Lebanon and Palestine offer no place for a curtain.
My guess is that Cheney only sees this as resolvable if Iran is brought down as a regional power. He and his team are not ascendent at the moment, but he is persistent and fights an effective battle within the policy bureaucracy. He gets Bush behind him by playing the savior-of-the-world messianic good/evil card which Bush can't resist.
Another factor why the Cold War analogy doesn't seem plausible. Our EU and other allies (including India) don't see Iran as the source of all evil like BushCo does. There is no united front in the west.
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