Too Late To Cry Over Spilt Milk....

For some time now various voices from both inside and outside the Middle East have been heard lamenting the fact that Tehran's influence in post-Saddam Iraq is making a mockery of the whole undertaking. Let us not deceive ourselves.

Come on people - it's a little too late to be upset now with what was only an inevitable consequence of removing the Sunni power elite form their primary positions of power. The Shia are going to be close with Tehran. The so-called Neocons saw what they wanted to see, made more tolerable, perhaps because in their eyes, whatever advantage gained by the clerical establishment of Qom, would be, at best shortlived - lest we forget, the mantra of those heedy days of April 2003, "real men go to Tehran."

Alas, Ladies and Gentlemen, the die is cast and unless we are prepared to confront Iran, further jeopardizing the shelf life of our Pax Americana, we are going to have to learn to live with the emergence of a new balance of power in Persian Gulf.