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Iran's Global Bedfellows
(Forbes) Claudia Rosett - If you listen to U.S. officialdom, Iran is a pariah, cast out by the world community for its sanctions-violating, nuclear-wannabe ways. But is Iran really isolated? Since Iran's June election, Ahmadinejad has posed alongside Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at a regional security summit in the Urals, met with the president of Turkey, hosted the Emir of Qatar, dropped in on The Gambia and made plans to visit Turkmenistan. Last month he dropped by Bolivia, Brazil and Venezuela - to follow up on plans to set up an Iranian-Venezuelan "nuclear village." The Iranian regime has continued its own outreach around the globe, with multibillion-dollar deals for Chinese investment in Iranian oil refineries, and plans to run a bank, build an amusement park, and assemble Iranian cars in Belarus. Israel's former ambassador to the UN, Dore Gold, accurately summarizes the problem in his new book, The Rise of Nuclear Iran. Gold writes that since Iran's Islamic revolution 30 years ago, "Iran has not acted like the typical state, carefully calibrating its national interests, but rather as the vanguard of a revolutionary movement." He notes the Islamic Republic's constitution calls openly for "continuation of the Revolution at home and abroad." The writer is a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.