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How Dangerous is Iran?
The Western news media recently provided major coverage of the election results in Iran and their aftermath. Certainly the announced results which reelected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a disappointment to the West and to many secular and moderate leaning Iranians. But the extensive news coverage of the protests and the news proclamations that the election was fraudulent certainly suggests that Western intelligence operatives were involved in guiding the international and perhaps even the Iranian reaction to the election. The current tension between Iran and Western countries is ostensibly about nuclear proliferation but Iran's vast oil resources and reasonable access to them almost certainly is a factor. It is worth mentioning that Iran is hardly the only world democracy which has recently experienced allegations of election irregularities. And unlike Iraq under Saddam Hussein or North Korea, it is at least to a certain degree a democracy. From a Western perspective, perhaps the most positive recent development concerning Iran had nothing to do with the recent election. Instead it was U.S. President Barack Obama's acknowledgment of past U.S. wrongdoing pertaining to Iran. Hopefully, in the long run, that assertion will be the beginning of a dialogue will eventually ease tensions and make the relationship between Iran and its world neighbors become mutually beneficial.
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