It is true that Iran has benefited from a reduction of the threat from the Taliban, the vanquishing of a prior enemy, and the establishment of a friendly government in Iraq.
The reason why this post, the comments, and virtually all of the discussion in the media about the Middle East and S.W. Asia is all nuts: Not only is there no evidence that Iran poses any threat to the US OR Israel (, or to any other country for that matter), but the evidence consistently implies that Iran is no threat and wants peace.

The false pretense propaganda campaign of lies by the Bush regime, special interests, the corporate-military cabal, and the main stream media continues to repeat the debunked bald faced fabrications portraying Iran as a threat. It is essentially the same BS campaign as the transparent lies used during the lead up to the War Crime that was and is the attack on Iraq.

Ahmadinejad has never threatened or called for an attack on Israel. He never called for Israel to be wiped off the map. During the speech (falsely claimed to contain the threat) Ahmadinejad never said the words Israel, map or wipe. In the same speech he asserted, as he has consistently asserted, that Iran wants peace with all nations.
There is no evidence that Iran has now, has ever had, or has ever desired to have a nuclear weapons program. They have called for the elimination of all Nuclear weapons which they refer to a great evil.
Every report that Iran is sending weapons to Iraq for use against US troops or the Iraqi military has been proven to be false and an intentional fabrication.
Every claim that Iran is training al Qaeda or the Iraqi resistance is preposterous because these groups are primarily Sunni’s hostile to Iran (shite) and it is obvious that Iran supports the Al-Maliki government.

Iran has not attacked another country in over two centuries. How many other countries could make that claim? Not the US and not Israel. The US attacked more than 100 countries (not including WWII) in the 20th century alone, which if you do the math averages out to more than 1 attack on another country per year.

Although Iran is not an Arab country they have supported the Arab peace proposal that is still on the table (but rejected by the US and Israel) which not only calls for the recognition of Israel but normalization of relations in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal to its pre-1967 borders and to obey International law requiring the right of return for the Palestinians driven from their homes.

Al-Maliki was right to condemn Israel’s 2006 aggression against (and near total destruction of) Lebanon. He was condemning the type of behavior that the current criminals occupying the US government falsely claim that Iran aspires to.

It seems obvious that Bush’s name calling and threats of violence against Iran in the months prior to Ahmadinejad’s election was intentionally designed to get as right-wing a result in their elections as possible. He wanted officials that he could point to as dangerous to conjure up pretense for mass murder in the next country on the list. As General Clark said he learned from the Pentagon in 2001, the Pentagon had been ordered to draw up plans to attack 5 (or it might have been 6) countries. The goal of the disinformation machine is to vilify the people and leaders of all of the countries on such lists.

It’s time that Americans wake up to the scam that has repeatedly succeeded with them for the past century. The scam uses lies and trumped up drama to convince Americans that some country (directly or indirectly) poses a danger to the US and that it would really in the best interests of the people of that country and the region (or to humanity as a whole) that we mass murder them and take from them both there freedom and whatever the economic elites in this country covet
.
Enough!!!

Peace, JK

Your critique of McCain’s Iran answer is rather weak. You note rightly that the war has helped Iran, but you fail to distinguish between whether we should be there now and whether we should have been there in the first place. Perhaps if we had more troops and better execution, Iran would be worse off; I submit that we don’t know. However, as Obama says, we have to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in. Moreover, Sen. Obama has said on the trail that he would put troops back into Iraq if al Qaeda flooded back in (as you know many of them were pushed out of Anbar Province due to the Sunni Awakening). McCain is right – it is a national security threat that Iran seeks to gain influence in Iraq, which should be a rather noncontroversial fact. The serious question is whether it is worth it to try and limit their influence by staying; my position is that the Iran threat, plus the threat of Sunni insurgents, plus the opportunity to improve security and thus reconciliation (as has happened in the past year) all make it worth it to continue providing a military presence there.