How far will Iran go with its nuclear program? Will diplomacy curtail it? Will the Israelis knock it out from the air? Will the United States soon be involved in another war?
by Cecil E. Maranville
The host of a popular Fox News program recently announced a survey question for viewers. It was a multiple-choice poll about the story they anticipated would be the biggest one of 2006. I don't usually pay much attention to such polls, but this one made me sit up straight in shock. Not because of what people said, but rather because of the huge story that Fox's producers did not even put on the list.
That's the story of Iran. No doubt, Iraq's rebuilding, the pursuit of terrorists, economic peaks and valleys, Israel and the Palestinians, as well as terrorist attacks will appear in 2006's headlines. But what Iran does could well affect one or all of these other major stories.
There have been rumors of Iranian involvement in Iraq since before the 2003 war began, including the funding of any group that would interfere with the American-led coalition's efforts to remove Saddam Hussein and to uproot those committed to his brutal dictatorship.
That might seem odd to many in the West, given the eight-year war Saddam's army waged against Iran in the 1980s, inflicting hundreds of thousands of casualties.
But Iran's ruling mullahs' hatred of the West trumped any lingering bitterness they held for Hussein and his Baathist thugs.
In addition, Iran's small cabal of clerics has good reason to sabotage its neighbor's democratization. They fear democracy in their own country, which would surely overthrow the mullahs in a free vote.
Crackpot or crafty?
In a highly manipulated election last year, Iran installed a little known former university professor turned mayor as its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. You now likely have heard or seen his name many times since he took office.
He projects a "man of the people" image with his '70s-style leisure suits over open collared shirts. He even wore this casual outfit when addressing the United Nations General Assembly! That might strike Westerners as comical and tempt them to dismiss Ahmadinejad as an eccentric, to put it politely.
