The New Cold War

A commentary from Thomas Friedman:

The next American president will inherit many foreign policy challenges, but surely one of the biggest will be the Cold War. Yes, the next U.S. president is going to be a Cold War president - but this Cold War is with Iran.

That is the real umbrella story in the Middle East today - the struggle for influence across the region, with America and its Sunni Arab allies (and Israel) versus Iran, Syria and their nonstate allies, Hamas and Hezbollah. As the May 11 editorial in the Iranian daily Kayhan put it, "In the power struggle in the Middle East, there are only two sides: Iran and the U.S."

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My Comment: As I had mentioned in my post on Tuesday -- The Lebanese Sunni/Shiite Civil War -- Why We Should Care, we in the West are now becoming actively engaged (through proxies) in a hot war with Iran. But while the emphasis is on the U.S. role, we should really look at the religious component of this conflict. The Sunni - Shiite conflict is soaked with blood, and there is no reason to believe that the future will get better. And for us in the West ... Thomas Friedman is right when he mentions that we cannot contain, control, or even suspend the direction that all of these parties are heading in the Middle East.