March 18, 2015

Iran's Great Cultural Advantage

By Robert D. Kaplan

Throughout all the vicissitudes of dealing with Iran, an obvious fact has been insufficiently addressed: The external behavior of Iran's regime is simply more dynamic and more effective than that of any other Muslim regime in the Middle East. Iran has constructed thousands of centrifuges. Tehran has trained and equipped Hezbollah in Lebanon and Shiite forces in Iraq and Yemen, and it has propped up Syria's embattled president. Turkey and the Arab world appear sleepy-eyed in comparison. Iran acts. The other Muslim countries struggle to formulate responses, and when they do, they are still less effective than the Iranians. Why is that so? What secret sauce does the Iranian regime have?

Read the full piece at Real Clear World.

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