"Any rapprochement between Iran & the US will have to acknowledge Iran’s centrality in its region"

"...Loose talk in the U.S. of “regime change,” accompanied as usual by circa 1945 visions of cheery flower-laden Iranians greeting American tanks in Tehran, ignores the continuity of aims between the shah and the Islamic governments. Iran would give them up only when the country itself, as we know it, ceases to exist -- an unconscionable idea that cannot be separated from visions of a wider apocalypse in the region.

Any rapprochement between Iran and the U.S. will have to acknowledge Iran’s centrality in its region -- just as the U.S. eventually recognized India’s in South Asia after a series of futile alliances with Pakistan. But the U.S. has never been further away from this possibility, as Republican candidates line up to prove themselves more trigger-happy than the next. Suddenly, entire countries, indeed civilizations, with complex histories are being depicted as potentially uncomplaining, even grateful, victims of aerial bombing. ..."