The Iranian and Palestinian situations both point to increasing instability in the Middle East. This is a source of much concern, particularly to the "Realist" school of international relations who value stability and continuity above all else.
The Posse views Hamas' victory as a positive development. The status quo of the past 30+ years was unsustainable. The Palestinians have been spoiling for a fight for decades and now it looks like they are to get their wish. The strange quasi-war has resulted in generations of misery but little real movement.
Until one side achieves victory, until a decision is finally reached, there can be no real peace.
If anything, this was the lesson of the entire Arab-Israeli conflict. Had Israel occupied Cairo, Amman and Damascus, the entire corrupt ediface of Arab nationalism may well have fallen. Instead, the Arab regimes limped on, bankrupting their people and prolonging the Palestinian agony.
For good or ill, Hamas may finally provoke the reckoning that has been waiting for more than half a century.
Iran is in a similar situation. The revolution of 1979 remains incomplete. It has never been fully resolved. Either radical Shi'ism will sweep the Gulf or it will collapse in on itself and be destroyed. The stalemate of the Iran-Iraq War resolved nothing, and now we see Iran spoiling for a rematch.
Its increasingly vitriolic language can only be understood in this context: Iran wants war. It is desperate to be perceived as the victim, but it wants war all the same.
Whether this is because Iran already has atomic weapons or because it hopes to get them in the chaos that follows is unclear. Indeed, Iran may have come to realize that it can never get atomic weapons and instead seeks an alternative form of warfare.
This is an intriguing option, but one that cannot be ruled out. Given Iraq's bluster about its almost non-existant WMD stocks, it is not impossible that Iran is doing the same thing.
This is perhaps why Iran is so aggressively seeking to provoke an American or Israeli air strike - if there is nothing to destroy, the raid can only reinforce Iran's political position as leader of the Islamic world.
Iran would then be able to draw a stark line between those on the side of Islam and those on the side of Israel. It could close the Persian Gulf to shipping and rely on its partnership with the Caucasian states for supplies.
The Mullahs may be in the same situation as Andropov and Gorbachev in the late 1980s: they know their system is collapsing and that the silver bullet - atomic weapons - is out of reach.
Yet they can hide behind the illusion that they are going to have them to provoke a war now, rather than waiting for the inevitable fall.
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