Good cop/Bad cop

Mark Steyn writes,

Millenarian Iran wants to nuke us. Wahhabist Saudi Arabia wants to own us.

The House of Saud has advanced quite a long way toward the goal. Nevertheless, the idea that de facto acceptance of Iranian nukes plus giving them money, arms, technology and global legitimacy will assist Teheran to "change for the better" is stupid. As I said to John Oakley, Iran has spent 35 years declining to accept the most basic norms of state-to-state relations and using all means at its disposal to act extra-territorially. We have just substantially enhanced their means to act extra-territorially and cemented the regime in place.

Besides, Obama isn't thinking about any of that. He isn't weighing who's more likely to moderate their particular virulent strain of Islamic imperialism - any more than he cares whether what replaced Mubarak was better or worse. He was opposed to Mubarak because Mubarak was a designated American ally, just as he was opposed to Gaddafi because George W Bush turned him. That's why, in a choice between a pro-American theocratic dump and an anti-American theocratic dump, he instinctively favors the latter. The "student radical" here isn't me, it's Obama - aided by the quintessential superannuated "student radical" John Kerry.

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