(Washington Post) David Ignatius - For Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, it's a double bind: If he offers on the nuclear program a deal that would be acceptable to the West, he risks undermining what he sees as the regime's legitimacy. But if he doesn't offer a deal, the steady squeeze will continue. Eventually, something's got to give. Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argues that the Iranian regime is gradually bleeding itself to death for the sake of its nuclear program. He likens the process to the demise of the Soviet Union, which bankrupted itself in an arms race with the U.S. Sadjadpour likes to invoke an old saying about dictatorships: "While they rule, their collapse appears inconceivable. After they've fallen, their collapse appeared inevitable."
2012-03-12 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive