THOSE WHO DWELL ON HISTORY ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT:

Pragmatism may trump zeal as Iran's power grows: Iran faces a July 12 deadline on the West's incentives intended to defuse nuclear standoff. (Scott Peterson, 7/06/06, The Christian Science Monitor)

Iran and its leadership have also changed over time, experts say. Dreams of exporting the revolution evaporated long ago. "Twenty years ago, the Iranian public sphere was [still] ideological.... At that time, talk of US-Iran relations was taboo," says Hamid Reza Jalaiepour, a US hostage-taker, former intelligence officer, and provincial governor. [...]

There is new "common ground," because US military control of adjacent Iraq and Afghanistan means "the US is a close neighbor of Iran," says Jalaiepour. Populists like Ahmadinejad "are looking for development [and] need votes"; the US likewise "can't solve its problems through another war, or through sanctions."

The distance from de facto allies to sweetness and light is short in all but emotional terms.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 6, 2006 9:55 AM