U.S. Syrian-Iranian Policy Is Difficult to Understand

The administration of the U.S. Government has offered the Assad Alawite Government of Syria a generous offer of surrender, Sect. of State Kerry said that they would need only mutually agree on an interim government I would suppose before an election of the Muslim Brotherhood into total power. How one wonders could Assad demure on that?

I still wonder about U.S. foreign policy on the Middle East. Why is it that we stimulated and supported escalation of a revolt against the government of Syria? It doesn't especially seem to be in Israel's best interest and the first answer that comes to mind is that the administration is worried about Iranian nuclear weapons development and hope that some sort of Shi'a domino downfall would knock the Iranian revolution down. That seems like a long shot.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23012637

So far as I know U.S. problems with Iran began after the nationalization of the British oil fields in Iran after the Second World War. Iran had a democracy then and they still have-one of just two functioning ones in the Middle East. Of course we returned the fled Shah of Iran to power and legend has it forced out Mossadegh the Prime Minister. Subsequently we then built up a military for the Shah of the Peacock Throne and developed relations with a very cruel Savak secret police agency of Iran that were globe ranging repressing dissidents. The U.S.A. developed large corporate resource extraction interests and of the course the military industrial complex got good arms sales, and all that was sold to President Eisenhower as a bulkhead against communism. Yet we have seen that Iran has no tendency to become communist-even purging those well-meaning anti-souls.

So during the Iranian revolution the student radicals captured the U.S. embassy, as a temporary measure yet didn't kill anyone-such innocent days. One imagines that Saul Olinsky and or the Weather Underground or even perhaps a returned from Vietnam radicalized John Kerry if Iranian would have joined in that event. The long, slow burning institutional grudge of the U.S. government cannot forgive the Iranians for their trespass, yet Hillary Clinton should have-the State Department was very slow in rescuing the Ambassador in Benghazi as if it weren't to important.

It might be the development of nuclear weapons that is of ongoing concern since former President Amadhdinijab has left office. He did like to twit the U.S. Government yanking its chain with threats on Israel and the Great Satan of course-a true populist exploiting patriotism. Even so Iran does have legitimate defense concerns. Saudi probably has a nuke or two, Pakistan has dozens or hundreds and both nations are Sunni while Iran is Shi'a. Neither is it likely that Iran has forgotten the Iran-Iraq war when Saddam used Iranian corpses to make bridges for his tanks. There were more than a million casualties in that war.

Probably the better way to get along with Iran is restoration of as normal of relations as possible. Usually people on good terms with a fair amount of transparency don't wake up and decide to surprise nuke a neighbor or two especially if it guarantees a mass retaliation.

Iran has defense concerns from the Sunni world and an urban populace that has a tendency for westernization something like that of Turkey. Iran in some respects can adjust its democracy like that of Canada of the past. Iran's Council of Experts is comparable to Canada's Privy Council that is now mostly anachronistic yet formerly was more powerful than parliament as in Iran today. As times change the quantification and allocation of power to various institutions shifts without need for revolution. The Democracy of the United States is somewhat different than either and more of a Republic or really a corporatist entity with pretensions of global universal hegemony through Wall Street. Normalization of relations with Iran-just diving in is likely to be the logically best way to direct U.S. foreign policy.

Another concern of Iran is globalism. There are of course various megalomaniacs of all stripes seeking world dominion. AL Gore has a recent book named 'The Future' that outlines an emerging networked globe marketplace evolution. Not everyone shares that goal or thinks it would be good of course; many have ecosphere reform ideas that fit with economic reform while keeping strong individual boundaries as if they were local gauge symmetries letting democracy and development exist nationally. Iranian Shi'a leaders may be slow to want anything to do with the corporatist world seeking to restore plundering of natural resources supremacy and degradation of morality. The homosexual elite of the Obama administration may hate the Islamic folkways and Sharia proscribed homosexuality. Arnold Toynbee noted that of all social institutions people will defend their religion most strongly especially since it is a matter of eternal fate.

Stimulating the Syrian war was not a good idea and it's difficult to say where it will lead except that tens of thousands more are likely to die. When the war ends there will be thousands of new highly experienced terrorists and professional revolutionaries experiencing unemployment and new local purges of Shi'a, Alawite or Sunni. Probably the next President of the United State will have to deal with issues generated from the conflict. Certainly a Christian influence on Syrian events seems to be minimal.