AN IMPORTANT RAND STUDY CALLS INTO QUESTION CONVENTIONAL RIGHT WING THINKING ON IRAN

The tumultuous events of recent days have further confirmed just how destructive militant American thinking about Iran has been. As President Obama understood and said relentlessly in the past year, there are clearly a huge amount of people to engage in Iran, probably the majority. Of course, the overwhelming question will be how to reach them. But the damage has been done to the conservative regime, and events on the ground in Iran, in addition to events in Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and Gaza, intimate a re-alignment is emerging across the Middle East, a move of Islamic political movements toward the center and away from radicalism, as Dr. Mahdi Abdul Hadi, the Palestinian scholar,  has wisely noted. A wise president, and a wise Congressional leadership, will not squander the opportunity to engage.

Reported in the Washington Post, this Rand study, a bastion of American military thinking, should be read by all who think that attacking Iran is the only option for making the Middle East safe. The vestiges of neoconservative ideology continue to disintegrate.