Instead of taking military action against Iran, the United States has twice invaded Iran's bitterest enemy, Iraq. And what Iran couldn't do for itself, George W. Bush did for it: Saddam Hussein is gone, and Tehran's influence in the Persian Gulf is greatly enhanced.
First of all, as if he really believes Iraq distracted us from kicking Iran's ass. Get real.
But back to his point that Iran benefited from our destruction of the Saddam regime. Of course, it isn't just Koppel who believes this. Lots of anti-Iraq War people assert this. But where's the evidence?
The Gulf Arab states are getting closer to us out of fear of Iran, buying our weapons, and secretly urging us to destroy the Iranian regime before it goes nuclear. American forces in Iraq, the Gulf, and Afghanistan hem Iran in. Iran lives under increasingly tight sanctions that undermine their economy and prevent Iran from rebuilding their military (whether sanctions will halt their nuclear progress is another question). The Iranians support terrorists at the low end, and at the high end hope to have nukes (that is completely independent of whether Saddam is alive and in power). But in the middle area of conventional military power, the Iranians are limited to a strategy of beating their chests and flinging poo to scare people away.
The sole "evidence" for Iran's supposed good fortune is that Iran has somehow increased their influence in Iraq because of the fall of Saddam and perhaps secretly controls the Iraqis. That is ridiculous. Yes, they have their Sadrist hand puppets in the government and operate in southern Iraq. But the Iranians operated in southern Iraq even before the Iraq War. Back then, southern Iraq was barely under the control of Saddam's forces. And while Saddam was hated by the Iranians and is obviously gone, this is hardly a gift to Iran. If so, was eliminating Hitler a Western gift to Stalin? Wasn't Hitler a bulwark against Soviet communism entering central and eastern Europe?
The fact is, Iraq under Saddam was too weak to be a threat to Iran notwithstanding Saddam's position in opposition to the Iranians. Saddam's military was ravaged by two wars against American-led forces and unable to rebuild their military. Their only hope to hold off even a weakened Iran was to pretend they had chemical weapons. And "Iraq" was essentially just the central region. Southern Iraq has Shias who hated Saddam; the Kurdish regions were effectively out of Saddam's control; and even Anbar was fairly autonomous with the locals nominally under Saddam's control.
Today, Iraq has more of its people supporting the new democratic government, oil revenues are up and will continue to climb, America as their protector (and let's discuss how much our influence inside Iraq has gone up after the fall of Saddam, eh?), and the Iraqis are rearming and getting Western training to make their troops more effective. The Sadrists are a problem, but they are merely a sizable bloc in parliament and nowhere near big enough to control Iraq (they won nearly 10% of the seats in the last election). And the Sadrists have many enemies inside Iraq--including Shia enemies who suffered under the attack of their death squads during the major fighting of the insurgencies period.
If you really think the overthrow of Saddam was a gift to Iran that benefits them, you're just not paying attention. Or the word "enhanced" doesn't mean what you think it means.
Year 30 of Koppel held hostage to left-wing thinking.
