Saudis can thank US for strengthening Iran

As you might recall, Vice President Dick Cheney visited Iraq yesterday to urge the Iraqi parliament not to go on its scheduled two-month summer recess.

But as Time Magazine's Robert Baer writes, the most important part of Cheney's oversees trip is his meeting with the Saudi royal family:

The real work is to be done in Saudi Arabia, where Cheney will try tocalm Saudi nerves over Iran. U.S. officials who visit the Gulf tell methat their Saudi interlocutors all ask the same questions: When theUnited States is forced to cede Iraq to Iran, what happens next? Or,more fatefully, what happens to the Arabs when one day the U.S.reconciles with Iran?

And it's not as if the Iranians have been helping ease Saudinerves. On Tuesday the Iranian deputy foreign minister offered to givethe United States a "face saving withdrawal." When the Iranians talklike this, the Saudis draw on their worst nightmares, like an Iranianhelicopter evacuating the last American troops off the roof of ourembassy in Baghdad. The nightmare ends with an isolationist U.S.handing the Gulf over to a "pragmatic" Iran.

This confirms the concerns that the war in Iraq helped Iran establish what academics call a Shia Crescent, which spans from Tehran through Baghdad to Beirut.

Translation: the Iraq war has helped benefit Iran's political influence in the region, and their government's ability to purge dissent from the young liberal minority.