February 23, 2009

Iran’s nuclear program is close to a fait accompli

reports the New York Times. And according to the BBC, Iran quite brazenly offered to stop killing U.S. and British troops in Iraq in 2005 if the West acceded to its nuclear ambitions. Perhaps the most remarkable revelation in the Beeb piece is the extent to which Iranian military assistance in Afghanistan — something former NSC staffer Hillary Mann went on record about in the Times a couple years back — was actually incorporated into American policy:

Hillary Mann, one of the US delegates, remembers how one Iranian military official pounded the table in his eagerness to get the Americans to change targets.

“He unfurled the map on the table and started to point to targets that the US needed to focus on, particularly in the north,” she told the BBC.

“We took the map to Centcom, the US Central Command, and certainly that did become the US military strategy.”

Funny how foreign policy problems tend not to lend themselves to simple solutions. Sometimes your enemies can help you more than your friends.