[lbo-talk] Juan Cole: preliminary reactions to the Iranian vote totals

Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net
Sun Jun 14 19:07:42 PDT 2009


On Sun, 14 Jun 2009 18:52:45 -0700 (PDT) Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:


> The US cannot stabilize Iraq unless Iran consents to it.

True, true, a thousand times true.


> Iran is also the US's ally in Afghanistan, against their mutual enemy the
> Taliban.

The Iranians undoubtedly don't like the Taliban. But two questions come to mind:

1) Just how worried are the Iranians about the Afghan Talibanis? You could see how they might be worried about Iraq -- a big country, right on their flank, with whom they recently fought a horribly sanguinary war. Afghanistan doesn't seem to be quite in that league.

2) If they were worried, what could they do about it? There are Shia in Afghanistan, but they don't seem to amount to much politically. Or am I mistaken about this?

--

Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org



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