Wash Times story on Gates noting how the clerics have been set aside by the military putsch led by Ahmadinejad's Revolutionary Guards. Story by way of WPR's Media Roundup.
Gates the Wise recognizes the value in calling a spade a spade: My "Pentagon's New Map" prediction that the mullahs would lose power by 2010 actually came true, and to our benefit.
Now we face a military dictatorship (Gates' phrase, falling in line with Secy Clinton's descriptions) unblemished by religious nuttiness and thoroughly committed to preserving its power. Ahmadinejad's strategic goal of a non-cleric-based party dictatorship has been achieved.
Why to our benefit? The cleric-based rule could never be satisfied, because we could never give it what it craved: control over Islam. But Ahmadinejad's regime wants something far less and easier to negotiate: regime preservation and recognition of its "great achievements"--just like Brezhnev's "great patriotic war" vets wanted their due, so now does Ahmadinejad's Iran-Iraq vets. And they seek it is such unimaginative ways--the nuclear program. Nothing we haven't seen before or dealt with.
So either we manage Iran for what it is, or we spend all our time and effort trying to stave off the nuclear achievement--a true fool's errand promoted by those interested in seeing Israel's regional WMD monopoly maintained at all costs. That brand of "realism" is anything but.
Instead, Iran's achievement ultimately works to our favor. Why? Because it provides us the dynamics we seek to achieve a regional security architecture that's top-down instead of bottom-up and based on the unachievable--for now--goal of Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Ahmadinejad's achievement, as repugnant as it is, moves the ball. Just check out Turkey's responses if you doubt me.