Joe Klein checks in on the country and our policy towards it:
Iran is more like a baby Soviet Union. A regional power, with ties to a dangerous terrorist network–Hizballah–but one that will respond to international diplomatic pressure. It is also a real country, with real assets, and unlikely to take actions that will result in a devastating attack by the U.S. or Israel. It is not Al Qaeda. If it continues to be recalcitrant–and there is no reason to believe it won't–the strategic answer is containment, just as we contained the Russians. This would involve a regional defensive alliance against Iran–an informal one, perhaps–involving Iraq, the Gulf States and the Sunni powers (plus Israel), a project that David Petraeus has been quietly pursuing as head of Centcom.
It would include the provision of anti-missile capabilities and the guarantee of American support if Iran moves on any of these nations. It also assumes that Iran will develop a nuclear weapon, which–as things stand–seems a probability. Most experts believe that Iran's aims here are defensive, as Hashemi Rafsanjani–the only Iranian leader ever to publicly mention the possibility of a bomb–said in 2001: as a deterrent to Israel's nuclear arsenal. Any nuclear proliferation is potentially destabilizing–although it is also potentially stabilizing, preventing adversaries from going to total war, as war the case in the Cold War and now seems to be holding firm (in a nervous-making way) between India and Pakistan.
The Dish 