It goes without saying that Iran's profile as defined by President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad for the past several years has been abysmal but the campaign by the US to isolate Iran and encourage military build-ups by neighboring states is hardly going to calm any nerves in the region. The most recent aspect of that campaign was the announcement that the UAE has decided to purchase some $3.3 billion worth of missiles from the US. The announcement was made with the acknowledgment that the threat facing the Emirates is low and it is only the supposed potential bellicosity of Iran that creates any need for a heavily militarized UAE. Just recently US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made headlines when he urged nations to support Iraq as the only option for containing Iranian ambitions. That was a particularly unsettling call from the US given that it was the US support of Iraq that propelled Saddam Hussein to invade his neighbor and prompted a senseless war that took the lives of millions of Iraqi and Iranian men over the course of nearly a decade. At that time Saddam was fearful of Iranian influence creeping into the majority Shiite population of Iraq and fueling an uprising against his largely Sunni Baathist government. The US shared similar concerns. Never mind that both the revolutionary regime newly installed in Iran and that of Saddam Hussein had already proven equally murderous when it came to internal opposition, both real and perceived. The US was playing with its own game with its own goals. Clearly its real goals were in no way achieved and failure has come back to rear its head both in the guise of the current fiasco in Iraq and the continued revolutionary government in Iran. There are without doubt a number of players in the Middle East in whom it would be quite risky to place one's trust. If there is one power that has seemed intent on militarizing the region, however, it has been the US. This certainly does not place the US on a moral level above any other player in the region. __
