The Iran Chess Game: Religion Counts

This essay captures a part of the puzzle.

The world now anticipates that the U.S. will reach a strategic agreement with Iran. Russia and China are responding by offering their own deals to Tehran.

What to notice about that statement?  Iran is being courted as a possible client state by the US, the Russkis, and PRC.  This is key, folks--and we'll mention why a little later.

...Russia is retaliating against the West’s stance on Ukraine. Russia has made it clear all along that it would respond to Western efforts to remove Crimea from Russia by making trouble in Iran, as Russia’s deputy foreign minister warned last March. Russia, unlike the U.S., views the world as a single chessboard: attack my position here, and I will hurt you somewhere else...

We're beginning to see why Obozo is way out of his league here.  But he's not alone.

...My conservative friends who urge us to “stand up to Putin” should take a cold, dispassionate look at the whole of the chessboard and anticipate moves of this sort; otherwise, the whole thing is a lot of beery blather. As I wrote recently, Israel takes the brunt of American policy blunders. What happens if Putin gives Iran the means to shoot down anything Israel (and a good deal of what the U.S.) might throw at it? No-one in Washington seems to ask such questions....

...which includes Bomb-Bomb McCain.  (And "beery" is a very sly way of naming him, no?)

Now let's add to the mix!

...China, which depends on Persian Gulf oil more than any other major economy, is watching these developments with alarm,...

PRC has already made kissy-face with Saudi Arabia and does NOT need a mess in the Middle East.

Now back to that "client state" thing.  Since the Shah was deposed, there has been a quiet but on-going struggle within Iran.  On one side are the remnant-Western parties, arguably led by MEK.  While MEK is a Communist *cough* "SJW" bunch, it is also by its nature a materialist-centered group.  That materialism is also a driving force in what remains of the old US-allied Iranian citizenry--the Shah gang, so to speak.

On the other side, and currently in power, is the Mullah bunch.  Shi'ite, thus not ISIS (which is Sunni), and very religious Muslim.  That's the part that the US does not understand.  It's also why Putin has been playing the "religion" card, even though his 'religion' is not Muslim--and probably as deep as Obama's--it's a card that the Muslims understand and respect.

But since the mullahs, Iran has been very careful to avoid becoming a client-state of anyone, whether Western, Eastern, or betwixt.  The mullahs are flat-out disinterested in the materialist sirens.

So.  If the mullahs are displaced through a US or Russki proxy revolution, things will change.

But will it be for the worse?  Or the better?