A WARNING FROM THE MIDEAST – AT 7:36 P.M. ET:  My well-informed friend, Banafshez Zand-Bonazzi, refers us to an excellent piece in today's New York Times, outlining the Islamic challenge we face in a Middle East now in daily turmoil:

TEHRAN — Hopeful that the protests sweeping Arab lands may create an opening for hard-line Islamic forces, conservatives in Iran are taking deep satisfaction in the events in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, where secular leaders have faced large-scale uprisings.

While the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad confronted its own popular uprising two years ago — and successfully suppressed it — conservatives in Iran said they saw little similarity between those events and the Arab revolts, and instead likened the recent upheavals to Iran’s own 1979 Islamic revolution.

“In my opinion, the Islamic Republic of Iran should see these events without exception in a positive light,” said Mohammad-Javad Larijani, secretary general of the Iranian High Council for Human Rights and one of the most outspoken figures among Iran’s traditional conservatives.

He made it clear that he hoped the “anti-Islamic” government of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who was ousted in Tunisia, would be replaced by a “people’s government,” meaning one in which conservative Islamic forces would gain the upper hand, as they did when Iranian people overthrew Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, establishing a quasi theocracy.

On the opposite side are the United States and France, he said, who are “doing everything they can to ride the wave and prevent the people from establishing the regime that they desire.”

France?  Isn't France generally one of the most pro-Muslim countries of Europe?  Shows what appeasement ultimately gets you.

In comments published Friday on the Web site of the semiofficial news agency ISNA, Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, who favors a political system in which elections merely endorse “divinely chosen” clerical leaders, congratulated the people of Tunisia and Egypt, stating that they had acted “based on the principles” of Iran’s Islamic revolution.

COMMENT:  I've been monitoring the news networks today, which are giving heavy coverage to events in Egypt.  What is striking is the expert guests they've depended on:  very few professors in Mideast studies departments of American universities.  Hmm.  How much federal aid goes into those departments every year?  And they really have nothing to say about this convulsion in the Mideast?

And, thankfully, we've heard almost no claims that the "root cause" of the uprising lies in the "Israeli occupation."  Maybe there's a bit of maturity going on.

It's easy to criticize the Obama administration on this, and we're always willing to do that, but the Obamans, like the Bush and Clinton people before them, are caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.  We want to advance democracy, but we understand that a free election in a part of the world wallowing in the tenth century might bring the fundamentalists to power. 

You may be certain that the Iranians are active behind the scenes, trying to influence the direction of the protests. 

Oh, one really discordant note:  On the very day that the most important Arab country is in flames, the new United States ambassador to Syria presented his credentials in Damascus, rewarding Syria with a new American presence, even though Syria hasn't done a thing to deserve it.  If the Syrian people ever revolt, as the Egyptians are revolting, they'll remember this day.  The Obamans can be faulted for this misstep, an extension of Barack Obama's "outreach" policy, which has been a dismal failure.

January 28, 2011