Iraqs Ayatullah Sistani met with the Iranian Foreign Minister this week

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http://www.time.com/time/columnist/klein/article/0,9565,1064418,00.html

Iran's Pragmatic Face

Did Iran benefit most from Bush's Middle East Policy?

Iraq apologized to Iran last week. It acknowledged Saddam Hussein's role in provoking the devastating eight-year war between the two countries in the 1980s. This is an extraordinary gesture, and perhaps a provocative one. No doubt Iraq's Sunnis were not thrilled by either the apology or the blatant Shi'ite bonding that accompanied the diplomatic visit of Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi to Baghdad. Nor was the Bush Administration comforted by Kharrazi's meeting with Iraq's de facto leader, the Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani in Najaf. Sistani has never met with a U.S. official.

Is it possible that Iran is the country that has benefited most from President Bush's Middle East policy? It's an argument I've heard in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey over the past year—and also in Israel, where fear of Iranian intentions has become something of a mania. The argument goes like this: the U.S. has eliminated Iran's two neighboring enemies, Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. Although the U.S. Army is camped out on Iran's eastern and western borders, it is an exhausted, overstretched army. After a period of hawkish puffery in Washington, most military experts—even those in the Bush Administration—believe that a full-bore invasion of Iran would be extremely difficult, and very unwise absent the most flagrant provocation. If the mullahs decide that the development of a nuclear bomb is their highest priority, there may not be much we can do to stop them.

But Iran is a confusing place, even to many Iranians, who tend to laugh about the perversity of their political system. The government is shadowy and redundant, with all sorts of factions, secular and religious, competing for power. A lunatic paralysis prevails, which makes it unlikely that Iran will be able to exploit its newfound prominence in the region. Any pretense of democracy seemed to evaporate in 2004, when most of the reform majority in the parliament was blocked from running for re-election by the ruling mullahs ...

And yet, a year later, Iran is in the midst of a raucous presidential election, scheduled for June 17, in which major issues—like rapprochement with the U.S.—are being debated freely in the press.

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