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Having countries like Russia and China unwilling to see Iran crushed has helped. Iran can survive sanctions.

A failed military action would benefit Iran, proving its power. By contrast, a successful attack that dramatically delayed or destroyed Iran's nuclear capability would be a serious reversal.

The principle of mutual assured destruction, which stabilized the U.S.-Soviet balance in the Cold War, would govern Iran's use of nuclear weapons. If Iran struck Israel, the damage would be massive, forcing the Iranians to assume that the Israelis and their allies (specifically, the United States) would launch a massive counterattack on Iran, annihilating large parts of Iran's population.

Assuming the Iranians are rational actors, their optimal strategy lies not in acquiring nuclear weapons and certainly not in using them, but instead in having a credible weapons development program that permits them to be seen as significant international actors.

Up to this point, the Iranians have not even fielded a device for testing, let alone a deliverable weapon.

Both want to appear more fearsome than either is actually willing to act.

The Iranian strategy has been to maintain ambiguity on the status of its program, while making it appear that the program is capable of sudden success -- without ever achieving that success. The Israeli strategy has been to appear constantly on the verge of attack without ever attacking and to use the United States as its reason for withholding attacks, along with the studied ambiguity of the Iranian program.

If a country can develop nuclear weapons, there is no reason it can't develop hardened and dispersed sites and create enough ambiguity to deprive Israeli and U.S. intelligence of confidence in their ability to determine what is where.

first, whether the target had been destroyed when it was buried under rock and concrete; second, whether the target contained what Israel thought it contained; and third, whether the strike had missed a backup site that replicated the one it destroyed.

if the Israelis had an ultrasecret miracle weapon, postponing its use might compromise its secrecy. I suspect that if they had such a weapon, they would have used it by now.

The Americans emphasize these points, but they are happy to use the Israeli threats to build pressure on the Iranians. The United States wants to undermine Iranian credibility in the region by making Iran seem vulnerable. The twin forces of Israeli rhetoric and sanctions help make Iran look embattled. The reversal in Syria enhances this sense. Naval maneuvers in the Strait of Hormuz add to the sense that the United States is prepared to neutralize Iranian counters to an Israeli airstrike, making the threat Israel poses and the weakness of Iran appear larger.

We see the Israelis talking as if they were threatened but acting as if they were in no rush to address the supposed threat.

It is the U.S.-Israeli byplay that is most fascinating. On the surface, Israel is driving U.S. policy. On closer examination, the reverse is true. Israel has bluffed an attack for years and never acted. Perhaps now it will act, but the risks of failure are substantial. If Israel really wants to act, this is not obvious.

Rather than seeing Netanyahu as trying to force the United States into an attack, it is more useful to see Netanyahu's rhetoric as valuable to U.S. strategy. Israel and the United States remain geopolitically aligned. Israel's bellicosity is not meant to signal an imminent attack, but to support the U.S. agenda of isolating and maintaining pressure on Iran. That would indicate more speeches from Netanyahu and greater fear of war. But speeches and emotions aside, intensifying psychological pressure on Iran is more likely than war.

The United States came to realize that it was threatened from two directions, and it found itself battling both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias. The purpose of the surge in 2007 was to extricate itself from the war with the Sunnis and to block the Shia.

With Iraq contained and the United States withdrawing from the region, Saudi Arabia emerged as Iran's major challenger. Tehran now had the pieces in place to challenge Riyadh.

Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had fairly realistic visions of Iranian power along Saudi Arabia's northern border, completely changing the balance of power in the region.

First, they were fighting Sunnis in the northern Caucasus.

Second, an Iranian sphere of influence not only would threaten Saudi Arabia, it also would compel the United States to re-engage in the region to protect Saudi Arabia and Israel.

In 2009, it had appeared extremely likely that an Iran loosely aligned with Russia would enjoy a sphere of influence north of Saudi Arabia.

Possessing a handful of nuclear weapons would be a worst-case scenario for Iran, as it might compel massive attacks from Israel or the United States that Iran could not counter.

ernally, opposition to any accommodation with the United States was strong. But so was the sense that Ahmadinejad had brought disaster on Iran strategically and economically.

There is profound domestic opposition in the United States to dealing with the Iranian regime. Just as the Iranians still genuinely resent the 1953 coup that placed the shah on the throne, the Americans have never forgotten the seizure of the U.S. Embassy and the subsequent yearlong hostage crisis.

It has interests in the region, however, and chief among those are avoiding the emergence of a regional hegemon that might destabilize the Middle East.

A weakened Iran needs support in its fight with the Sunnis. The United States is interested in ensuring that neither the Sunni nor the Shia win -- in other words, in the status quo of centuries.

The United States cannot proceed unless the nuclear program is abandoned. Rouhani understands that, but he must have and end to sanctions and a return of Western investment to Iran in exchange.

The primary threat is domestic. In both countries, even talking to each other seems treasonous to some.

A second threat is outside interference.

But given how the Iranians and Americans see their positions, the odds are, that something will happen. In my book, The Next Decade, I argued that in the long run Iran and the United States have aligning interests and that an informal alliance is likely in the long run. This isn't the long run yet, and the road will be bumpy, but the logic is there.

The drawdown of American forces in Iraq is the first step. As U.S. power declines in Iraq, Iranian power increases.

If it continues its withdrawal of forces from Iraq, Iraq will be on its way to becoming an Iranian satellite.

If Iraq becomes an Iranian ally or satellite, the Iraqi-Saudi and Iraqi-Kuwaiti frontier becomes, effectively, the frontier with Iran.

Assuming that the United States is not prepared to increase forces in Iraq dramatically, the Iranians now face a historic opportunity.

The first is to retain the powerful negotiating hand it has by playing the nuclear card. The second is to avoid an air campaign by the United States against Iran’s conventional capabilities.

The Iranians would not have to invade militarily to be able to reshape the region. It would be sufficient for there to be the potential for Iran to invade. It would shift the regime survival question away from Iran to Saudi Arabia.

accepting the shift in the regional balance in favor of Iran, reversing the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq or attempting to destroy Iran’s conventional forces while preventing the disruption of oil from the Persian Gulf.

There is, of course, the option of maintaining or intensifying sanctions.

The Europeans are hardly of one mind on any subject save one: They do not want to see a disruption of oil from the Persian Gulf.

Therefore, at the table next week will be the Americans, painfully aware that its campaigns look promising at the beginning but frequently fail; the Europeans and Chinese, wanting a low-risk solution to a long-term problem; and the Russians, wanting to appear helpful while hoping the United States steps in it again and ready to live with soaring energy prices. And there are the Iranians, wanting to avoid a conventional war but not wanting to forego the opportunity that it has looked for since before the Islamic Republic — domination of the Persian Gulf.

the United States was unprepared for the unilateral role Turkey and Brazil played at the time they played it.

The nuclear issue is easy simply because it is not time-sensitive right now. The future of Iraq is time-sensitive and uncertain.

The first is to facilitate the American withdrawal

The second is to limit the degree of control Iran has in Iraq

The third is to persuade Saudi Arabia that the degree of control ceded to Iranians will not threaten Saudi interests

Western sanctions have dramatically increased the economic pressure on Iran and have affected a wide swath of the Iranian public.

The election of President Hassan Rouhani to replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after the latter's two terms was a sign of unhappiness.

The logic here suggests a process leading to the elimination of all sanctions in exchange for the supervision of Iran's nuclear activities to prevent it from developing a weapon. Unless this is an Iranian trick to somehow buy time to complete a weapon and test it, I would think that the deal could be done in six months.

An Iranian ploy to create cover for building a weapon would also demand a reliable missile and a launch pad invisible to surveillance satellites and the CIA, National Security Agency, Mossad, MI6 and other intelligence agencies. The Iranians would likely fail at this, triggering airstrikes however risky they might be and putting Iran back where it started economically. While this is a possibility, the scenario is not likely when analyzed closely.

There is a bit of irony in Israel and Saudi Arabia being allied on this issue, but only on the surface. Both have been intense enemies of Iran, and close allies of the United States; each sees this act as a betrayal of its relationship with Washington.

In a way, this marks a deeper shift in relations with Saudi Arabia than with Israel.

It was a massive producer of oil. It was also the protector of Mecca and Medina, two Muslim holy cities, giving the Saudis an added influence in the Islamic world on top of their extraordinary wealth. 

It was in British and American interests to protect Saudi Arabia from its enemies, most of which were part of the Muslim world.

Absent the United States in the Persian Gulf, Iran would have been the most powerful regional military power.

The United States did not want Iran to develop nuclear weapons. The Iranians didn't want the United States hindering Iran's economic development. The fact was that getting a nuclear weapon was not a fundamental Iranian interest, and crippling Iran's economy was not a fundamental interest to the United States absent an Iranian nuclear program.

The Iranians want investment in their oil sector and other parts of their economy. American oil companies would love to invest in Iran, as would other U.S. businesses.

There are other significant political issues that can't be publicly addressed. The United States wants Iran to temper its support for Hezbollah's militancy, and guarantee it will not support terrorism. The Iranians want guarantees that Iraq will not develop an anti-Iranian government, and that the United States will work to prevent this.

But in the end, this is not the problem that the Saudis and Israelis have. Their problem is that both depend on the United States for their national security. Neither country can permanently exist in a region filled with dangers without the United States as a guarantor.

The fact is that neither the Saudis nor the Israelis have a potential patron other than the United States.

The United States is not abandoning either Israel or Saudi Arabia. A regional policy based solely on the Iranians would be irrational. What the United States wants to do is retain its relationship with Israel and Saudi Arabia, but on modified terms.

The American strategy is built on experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. Washington has learned that it has interests in the region, but that the direct use of American force cannot achieve those goals, partly because imposing solutions takes more force than the United States has and partly because the more force it uses, the more resistance it generates. Therefore, the United States needs a means of minimizing its interests, and pursuing those it has without direct force.

Saudi Arabia is not abandoned, but nor is it the sole interest of the United States.

In the same sense, the United States is committed to the survival of Israel.

If Iranian nuclear weapons are prevented, the United States has fulfilled that commitment, since there are no current threats that could conceivably threaten Israeli survival. Israel's other interests, such as building settlements in the West Bank, do not require American support.

With this opening to Iran, the United States will no longer be bound by its Israeli and Saudi relationships. They will not be abandoned, but the United States has broader interests than those relationships, and at the same time few interests that rise to the level of prompting it to directly involve U.S. troops.

There are two problems with Obama becoming a foreign policy president.

There are many actions that would satisfy Obama’s accomodationist inclinations, but those would not serve well in portraying him as decisive in foreign policy.

So far, Obama’s policy toward Iran has been to incrementally increase sanctions by building a weak coalition and allow the sanctions to create shifts in Iran’s domestic political situation. The idea is to weaken President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and strengthen his enemies, who are assumed to be more moderate and less inclined to pursue nuclear weapons. Obama has avoided overt military action against Iran, so a confrontation with Iran would require a deliberate shift in the U.S. stance, which would require a justification.

The most obvious justification would be to claim that Iran is about to construct a nuclear device. Whether or not this is true would be immaterial.

As STRATFOR has argued in the past, destroying Iran’s nuclear capability does not involve a one-day raid, nor is Iran without the ability to retaliate. Its nuclear facilities are in a number of places and Iran has had years to harden those facilities. Destroying the facilities might take an extended air campaign and might even require the use of special operations units to verify battle damage and complete the mission. In addition, military action against Iran’s naval forces would be needed to protect the oil routes through the Persian Gulf from small boat swarms and mines, anti-ship missile launchers would have to be attacked and Iranian air force and air defenses taken out. This would not solve the problem of the rest of Iran’s conventional forces, which would represent a threat to the region, so these forces would have to be attacked and reduced as well.

It would strengthen the Iranian regime (as aerial bombing usually does) by rallying the Iranian public to its side against the aggression. If the campaign were successful, the Iranian regime would be stronger politically, at least for a while, but eviscerated militarily.

Iran could launch a terrorist campaign and attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz

We have argued that a negotiation with Iran in the order of President Richard Nixon’s reversal on China would be a lower-risk solution to the nuclear problem than the military option. But for Obama, this is politically difficult to do. Had Bush done this, he would have had the ideological credentials to deal with Iran, as Nixon had the ideological credentials to deal with China. But Obama does not. Negotiating an agreement with Iran in the wake of an electoral rout would open the floodgates to condemnation of Obama as an appeaser. In losing power, he loses the option for negotiation unless he is content to be a one-term president.

First, Obama will be paralyzed on domestic policies by this election. He can craft a re-election campaign blaming the Republicans for gridlock.

The other option for Obama is to look for triumph in foreign policy where he has a weak hand.

If Iran is going to be compelled to negotiate seriously with the United States, it is likely going to take a lot more than the pressure tactics Washington has attempted thus far.

Hamas not to mention Palestinian Islamic Jihad both have their headquarters based in Damascus and a lot of the funding for these militant groups passes through the Syrian capital, giving Damascus a great deal of leverage over these militant proxies.

Syria will continue to play a double game in extracting concessions from the Arab states while maintaining a strong relationship with Iran and Hezbollah

Change will be primarily violent in nature -- and thus harder to miss -- in the Middle East.

The United States is also not immune to change. In this generational shift, and all the tumult that comes with it, Washington will be forced to learn the value of restraint in balance-of-power politics, preferring to lean on regional partners and encourage strategic competition as a way of preserving its own power.

The Arab world is moving uncomfortably between two eras. The post-World War II era, in which Arab dictatorships and monarchies supplanted colonial rule, is now roughly blending with -- or in some cases outright colliding with -- a fractured landscape of long-repressed Islamist forces.

This dynamic will be particularly visible in the northern Levant region this year as Syria and Lebanon continue coming apart. From Stratfor's perspective, the regime in Syria has already fallen and is giving way to a familiar state of warlordism, where militias and clan interests reign supreme. There is no longer a political entity capable of wielding control over the entirety of Syrian territory, nor will there be for some time.

once Syrian President Bashar al Assad is removed from power, whether through a negotiated deal or by force, the Sunni forces will fragment along ideological, ethnic and geographic lines, with Salafist-jihadist forces battling against a more politically minded Muslim Brotherhood and secular Sunnis.

As their grip over Aleppo slips, Alawite forces will try to hold Damascus while preparing a mass retreat to their coastal enclave. The battle for Damascus could extend beyond the scope of this forecast.

The potential use of chemical weapons by Alawite forces in a state of desperation could accelerate the unraveling of the region; a U.S.-led coalition would have to assemble in haste to contain the chemical weapons threat.

The growing disparity in the U.S. and Iranian negotiating positions will largely relegate Iran to the role of regional spoiler. So long as Iran can create pain for its regional adversaries, it can slow its own descent.

Iraq remains Iran's primary regional imperative, however. The momentum building among Sunni forces in Syria will eventually spill into Iraq and challenge Shiite dominance.

Iran's presidential elections in June will reveal the declining relevancy of the clerical elite and the populist faction embodied by outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This creates a political void for the Revolutionary Guard to fill. The Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will try to check the Corps' growing influence by bolstering rival military and security agencies and backing a less controversial and more politically malleable ally from the pragmatic conservative camp for the presidency.

In Egypt, the military will adapt to an emerging Islamist political order. The military will remain the ultimate arbiter of the state and will rely on a number of factors -- including a fragmented judiciary, the military's economic leverage, a divided Islamist political landscape and the military's foreign relationships -- to check the Muslim Brotherhood.

Jordan, the oft-overlooked casualty of the Arab Spring, will continue to destabilize quietly and slowly in 2013

Israel and Turkey are both greatly affected by the shifting political dynamics of the Arab world, but both have little means to influence the change. The two former allies will continue exploring ways to restore a quiet working relationship under these new regional stresses, but a public restoration of diplomatic ties is less likely.

Israel will struggle internally over how to adapt to a new regional framework in which the reliability of old working partners is called into question.

Turkey sees an opportunity in the rise of Islamist forces in the Arab world but Ankara's limited influences restrain its actions beyond Turkish borders.

A more aggressive Saudi role in Syria will aggravate the civil war and create competition with other regional stakeholders, including Turkey, Qatar and Jordan.

In 2012, the European Union took numerous steps to mitigate the financial impact of its ongoing crisis.

First, the European crisis is fundamentally a crisis of competitiveness.

Second, the crisis has a political aspect. The European Union is not a federation but a collection of nation-states bound together by international treaties.

Third, the European crisis is threatening the social stability in some countries, especially in the eurozone's periphery.

In 2013, the two largest economies of the eurozone (Germany and France) will face low growth or even stagnation. This will have negative effects across Europe.

The conspicuous divide between the ruling elite and the populations of the periphery will be a key element in 2013, and some governments could fall. But even if opposition parties take power, they will face the same constraints as the governments that preceded them. In other words, a change in politicians will not bring a substantial change in policies regarding the European Union.

The only country in the eurozone periphery that has scheduled elections is Italy (in February). If the next Italian government fails to achieve political stability and apply economic reforms, the increased market pressure on Italy will make Rome more likely to require financial assistance from Brussels.

Because of the fundamental contradictions in the national interests and foreign policy strategies of the EU member states, the European crisis will continue generating political and economic divisions in the Continent in 2013.

Outside the eurozone, the United Kingdom will seek to protect its sovereignty and renegotiate its status within the European Union. But London will not leave the European Union in 2013.

Domestic Issues After the political tumult of 2012, Russia will face another year of anti-Kremlin protests, tensions among various political factions and ethnic groups, crackdowns and government reshuffles. Overall, the political tensions will remain manageable and will not pose a serious challenge to Moscow's control.

Russia has made significant progress recently in re-establishing influence in its former Soviet periphery.

Russia's relationship with Ukraine could be its most important connection in the former Soviet Union in 2013. Russia has been pursuing integration with Ukraine, primarily by taking over its natural gas transit infrastructure and calling on Kiev to join the Customs Union.

Georgia will be Russia's main concern in the Caucasus in 2013. With the political emergence of billionaire tycoon Bidzina Ivanishvili and his Georgian Dream movement, Russia's position in the country strengthened at the expense of the anti-Russian camp of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.

In the past year, Russia has changed its tactics toward Europe to preserve its presence and leverage for the future. Russia's primary link to Europe is the Europeans' dependence on Russia's large energy supplies, which Moscow knows will be threatened when more non-Russian supplies become available.

The United States and Russia will continue sparring over trade matters, negotiations for a new nuclear arms treaty and Russia's role in Iran and Syria. Stratfor does not expect major changes from Washington or Moscow that would break the gridlock in negotiations on these issues.

The low-level violence and instability that occurred throughout Central Asia in 2012 will continue in 2013.

Three things will shape events in East Asia in 2013: Beijing's struggle to maintain social and political stability amid lower economic growth rates; China's accelerating military modernization and increasingly aggressive moves to secure its territorial and economic interests in the region; and varied efforts by other regional players, including the United States, to adapt to China's changes. 

In 2013, the Chinese economy will continue the gradual, painful process of moving away from high export-driven growth and toward a model that is more sustainable in the long run.

But barring another global financial meltdown on the scale of 2008-2009, China's coastal manufacturing economy will not collapse outright. The decline will be gradual.

The ongoing, gradual eclipse of coastal China as a hub of global manufacturing over the next several years will lead to higher unemployment and social dislocation as more of China's 250 million-strong migrant labor force returns inland in search of work. 

Shadow banking is by no means new in China. But it has grown significantly in the past few years from the geographically isolated informal loan markets of coastal cities to a complex network of semi-legal entities that provides between 12 and 30 trillion yuan (between $1.9 trillion and $4.8 trillion) in credit -- at interest rates of 20-36 percent -- to thousands of struggling small businesses nationwide.

The Party's growing sense of insecurity -- both internally and with regard to the social consequences of China's economic transition -- likely will be reflected in continued censorship of online social platforms like Weibo, crackdowns on religious or other groups perceived as threatening, and the Chinese military's growing assertiveness over China's interests in the South and East China seas and Southeast Asia.

The decline of low-end coastal manufacturing in China will present enormous opportunities for Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and potentially Myanmar -- all of whom will continue to push strongly for foreign investment not only into natural resources and raw materials industries but also into developing better urban, transport, power generation and materials processing infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Vietnam and the Philippines -- China's most vocal opponents in Southeast Asia -- will continue to push for greater integration among members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and for U.S. business and military engagement in the region.

The Coming U.S. Withdrawal from Afghanistan Ahead of the 2014 drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, efforts will intensify to negotiate a settlement that gives the Taliban a place in a new government.

The negotiations will face numerous obstacles this year. There will be an upsurge in violence -- both in terms of officially sanctioned attacks designed to gain advantage on the negotiating table and spoiler attacks by Taliban elements allied with al Qaeda on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border.

Washington's intention to reduce its presence in the region will spur regional actors to fill the void. Pakistan will increase its interactions with Russia, Central Asia and Iran to prepare for a post-U.S. Afghanistan.

India will also turn its attention eastward, where the United States is quietly trying to forge a coalition of regional partners to keep a check on China in the Indo-Pacific basin. Myanmar in particular will be an active battleground for influence this year.

Preparing for a Post-Chavez Venezuela After a year of successful campaigning for re-election, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is in questionable health. Although the ultimate outcome of December's medical treatment for the ailing leader is unpredictable, Chavez's decision to name Vice President Nicolas Maduro as a political successor at the end of 2012 indicates that there is significant concern for his ability to remain in power.

Although it remains possible that Chavez will stay in power through the year, for Maduro to capitalize on Chavez's recent political gains, elections may need to be called sooner rather than later, regardless of Chavez's immediate health status.

Throughout 2013, Colombia will continue the incremental process of negotiating an end to the conflict with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish acronym FARC.

This will be a year of significant transition for Mexico. Policy issues that were bottled up by intra-party competition in the waning years of the National Action Party's administration have begun coming to the fore and will dominate 2013. These include socio-political issues like education, tax and pension reform.

Clearly, a nuclear strike on Tel Aviv would be catastrophic for Israel. Its ability to tolerate that threat, regardless of how improbable it may be, is a pressing concern for Israel.

In this context, Iran's nuclear program supersedes all of Israel's other security priorities. Israeli officials believe their allies, particularly those in the United States, should share this view.

There are plenty of scenarios in which Israel would not be able to manage security threats without American assistance.

Israel's response to the Iran talks -- profound unhappiness without outright condemnation -- has to be understood in this context, and the assumptions behind it have to be examined.

Iran does not appear to have a deliverable nuclear weapon at this point. Refining uranium is a necessary but completely insufficient step in developing a weapon. A nuclear weapon is much more than uranium. It is a set of complex technologies, not the least of which are advanced electrical systems and sensors that, given the amount of time the Iranians have needed just to develop not-quite-enough enriched uranium, seems beyond them.

Nations do not even think of deploying nuclear weapons without extensive underground tests -- not to see if they have uranium but to test that the more complex systems work. That is why they can't secretly develop a weapon: They themselves won't know they have a workable weapon without a test.

Of course, there are other strategies for delivering a weapon if it were built. One is the use of a ship to deliver it to the Israeli coast. Though this is possible, the Israelis operate an extremely efficient maritime interdiction system, and the United States monitors Iranian ports.

But these weapons are not small. There is such a thing as a suitcase bomb, but that is a misleading name; it is substantially larger than a suitcase, and it is also the most difficult sort of device to build.

even assuming Iran's acquisition of a nuclear weapon, its use against Israel would kill as many Muslims -- among them Shia -- as Israelis, an action tantamount to geopolitical suicide for Tehran.

If the Israelis forward-deployed to other countries, the Iranians would spot them. The Israelis can't be certain which sites are real and which are decoys.

Some will dismiss this as overestimating Iranian capabilities. This frequently comes from those most afraid that Tehran can build a nuclear weapon and a delivery system. If it could do the latter, it could harden sites and throw off intelligence gathering.

The Americans, on the other hand, saw an opportunity in the fact that there are no weapons yet and that the sanctions were hurting the Iranians. Knowing that they were not in a hurry to complete and knowing that they were hurting economically, the Iranians likewise saw an opportunity to better their position.

Washington wants to have multiple relations with regional actors, not just Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The Israelis tempered their response initially because they knew the status of Iran's nuclear program. Even though a weapon is still a grave concern, it is a much longer-term problem than the Israelis admit publicly.

if the negotiations fail, no one will be in a more dangerous position for trying. Six months won't make a difference.

But they understand that the outcome of these talks, if successful, means more than the exchange of a nuclear program for eased sanctions; it means the beginning of a strategic alignment with Iran.

As Richard Nixon's China initiative shows, ideology can relent to geopolitical reality. On the simplest level, Iran needs investment, and American companies want to invest. On the more complex level, Iran needs to be certain that Iraq is friendly to its interests and that neither Russia nor Turkey can threaten it in the long run.

Egypt went from disaster in 1967 to a very capable force in 1973. They had a Soviet patron. They might have another patron in 10 years.

But the real Israeli fear is that the United States is moving away from direct intervention to a more subtle form of manipulation. That represents a threat to Israel if Israel ever needs direct intervention rather than manipulation.

In the end, Israel is a small and weak power. Its power has been magnified by the weakness of its neighbors. That weakness is not permanent

Think of it as a cauldron framed by Russia, Iran and Turkey, occasionally stirred by Washington

The Caucasus region dominates a land bridge between the Black and Caspian seas.

The Greater Caucasus Mountains serve as the southern frontier of Russia. To the north of these mountains, running east to west, lies the Russian agricultural heartland, flat and without any natural barriers. Thus, ever since the beginning of the 19th century, Russia has fought for a significant portion of the Caucasus to block any ambitions by the Turkish or Persian empires.

In the chaos of the fall of the Soviet Union, various Georgian regions attempted to secede from Georgia with Russian encouragement. From the Georgian point of view, Russia represented a threat.

In response to what it saw as U.S. pressure around its periphery, the Russians countered in Georgia in 2008 to demonstrate U.S. impotence in the region.

For its part, Azerbaijan cannot afford to fight a war against Russian troops in Armenia while it also shares a northern border with Russia. Azerbaijan also faces a significant Iranian problem. There are more Azerbaijanis living in Iran than in Azerbaijan; Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is a prominent Azerbaijani-Iranian. The Soviets occupied all of Azerbaijan during World War II but were forced to retreat under British and American pressure after the war, leaving most of Azerbaijan inside Iran.

We could put it this way: Bosnia and Kosovo were obscure concepts to the world until they blew up. Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Abkhazia are equally obscure now.

For Azerbaijan, the burning issue is Nagorno-Karabakh. This is not a burning issue for the United States, but the creation of a stable platform in the region is.

Iran, which should be viewed as an Azerbaijani country as well as a Persian one, has two reasons to want to dominate Azerbaijan.

Altogether, the United States has the opportunity to forge a beneficial relationship with Azerbaijan that would put U.S. hands on one of Turkey’s sources of oil.

The American assumption in deciding to leave Iraq — and this goes back to George W. Bush as well as Barack Obama — was that over the course of four years, the United States would be able to leave because it would have created a coherent government and military. The United States underestimated the degree to which fragmentation in Iraq would prevent that outcome and the degree to which Iranian influence would undermine the effort. The United States made a pledge to the American public and a treaty with the Iraqi government to withdraw forces, but the conditions that were expected to develop simply did not.

The United States previously had an Iraq question. That question is being answered, and not to the American advantage. Instead, what is emerging is a Saudi Arabia question.

From the Saudi point of view, the critical element is a clear sign of long-term American commitment to the regime. American support for the Saudis in Bahrain has been limited, and the United States has not been aggressively trying to manage the situation in Yemen, given its limited ability to shape an outcome there.

One is to hold their position and hope for the best. The other is to reach out and see if some accommodation can be made with Iran.

The Obama administration appears to have adopted an increasingly obvious foreign policy. Rather than simply attempt to control events around the world, the administration appears to have selected a policy of careful neglect. This is not, in itself, a bad strategy. Neglect means that allies and regional powers directly affected by the problem will take responsibility for the problem. Most problems resolve themselves without the need of American intervention. If they don’t, the United States can consider its posture later. Given that the world has become accustomed to the United States as first responder, other countries have simply waited for the American response. We have seen this in Libya, where the United States has tried to play a marginal role. Conceptually, this is not unsound.

The pressure from Iran is becoming palpable. All of the Arab countries feel it, and whatever their feelings about the Persians, the realities of power are what they are. The UAE has been sent to ask the United States for a solution. It is not clear the United States has one. When we ask why the price of oil is surging, the idea of geopolitical risk does come to mind. It is not a foolish speculation.

However, the Syria situation differs from those of Afghanistan and Iraq. This time it is Washington's aversion to regime change that Tehran is trying to exploit.

An unfriendly Syria could cut Tehran off from Hezbollah, its pre-eminent non-state Arab ally, and jeopardize the position of its Iraqi allies.

limited airstrikes on Syria that do not undermine the al Assad regime could actually work in Iran's favor. Such airstrikes could divide the rebellion between factions that oppose military intervention and those that favor it.

what really gives Iran leverage is the fact that since 9/11, jihadists and Islamist groups have had the opportunity to gain power when Arab regimes collapse.

Unlike Syria's Arab neighbors, which want stability in the region, Iran welcomes disruption. It is reasonably secure internally, and it knows its spheres of influence may weaken but ultimately will not dissolve.

Second, ideas that once looked silly suddenly look wise. Just a few months ago, it was customary to make fun of Iranians, Russians and Chinese who, with their automatic distrust of all things American, spoke the bizarre language of “information sovereignty.”

Third, the sense of unconditional victory that civil society in both Europe and America felt over the defeat of the Total Information Awareness program – a much earlier effort to establish comprehensive surveillance – was premature.

From privately-run healthcare providers to privately-run prisons to privately-run militias dispatched to war zones, this is the public-private partnership model on which much of American infrastructure operates these days.

Fourth, the idea that digitization has ushered in a new world, where the good old rules of realpolitik no longer apply, has proved to be bunk. There’s no separate realm that gives rise to a new brand of “digital” power; it’s one world, one power, with America at the helm.

The sheer naivete of statements like this – predicated on the assumption that somehow one can “live” online the way one lives in the physical world and that virtual politics works on a logic different from regular politics – is illustrated by the sad case of Edward Snowden, a man with a noble mission and awful trip-planning skills.

Fifth, the once powerful myth that there exists a separate, virtual space where one can have more privacy and independence from social and political institutions is dead.

Convergence did happen – we weren’t fooled! – but, miraculously, technologies converged on the least secure and most wiretap-friendly option available.

It’s probably not a coincidence that LiveJournal, Russia’s favorite platform, suddenly had maintenance issues – and was thus unavailable for general use – at the very same time that a Russian court announced its verdict to the popular blogger-activist Alexei Navalny.

On matters of “Internet freedom” – democracy promotion rebranded under a sexier name – America enjoyed some legitimacy as it claimed that it didn’t engage in the kinds of surveillance that it itself condemned in China or Iran. Likewise, on matters of cyberattacks, it could go after China’s cyber-espionage or Iran’s cyber-attacks because it assured the world that it engaged in neither.

What is to be done? Let’s start with surveillance. So far, most European politicians have reached for the low-hanging fruit – law – thinking that if only they can better regulate American companies – for example, by forcing them to disclose how much data and when they share with NSA – this problem will go away.

As our gadgets and previously analog objects become “smart,” this Gmail model will spread everywhere. One set of business models will supply us with gadgets and objects that will either be free or be priced at a fraction of their real cost.

If this is, indeed, the future that we are heading towards, it’s obvious that laws won’t be of much help, as citizens would voluntarily opt for such transactions – the way we already opt for free (but monitorable) email and cheaper (but advertising-funded) ereaders.

For much of the 20th century, we assumed that our energy use was priced correctly and that it existed solely in the consumer paradigm of “I can use as much energy as I can pay for.” Under that paradigm, there was no ethics attached to our energy use: market logic has replaced morality – which is precisely what has enabled fast rates of economic growth and the proliferation of consumer devices that have made our households electronic paradises free from tiresome household work.

But of course we had never priced our energy use correctly because we never factored in the possibility that life on Earth might end even if we balance all of our financial statements.

Right now, your decision to buy a smart toothbrush with a sensor in it – and then to sell the data that it generates – is presented to us as just a purely commercial decision that affects no one but us.

But this is so only because we cannot imagine an information disaster as easily as we can imagine an environmental disaster.

there are profound political and moral consequences to information consumerism– and they are comparable to energy consumerism in scope and importance.

NSA surveillance, Big Brother, Prism: all of this is important stuff. But it’s as important to focus on the bigger picture -- and in that bigger picture, what must be subjected to scrutiny is information consumerism itself – and not just the parts of the military-industrial complex responsible for surveillance.

Some might say: If only we could have a digital party modeled on the Green Party but for all things digital. A greater mistake is harder to come by.

What we need is the mainstreaming of “digital” topics – not their ghettoization in the hands and agendas of the Pirate Parties or whoever will come to succeed them. We can no longer treat the “Internet” as just another domain – like, say, “the economy” or the “environment” – and hope that we can develop a set of competencies around it.

The Pirates’s tragic miscalculation was trying to do too much: they wanted to change both the process of politics and its content. That project was so ambitious that it was doomed to failure from the very beginning.

whatever reforms the Pirates have been advancing did not seem to stem from some long critical reflections of the pitfalls of the current political system but, rather, from their belief that the political system, incompatible with the most successful digital platforms from Wikipedia to Facebook, must be reshaped in their image. This was – and is – nonsense.

The least we can do is to acknowledge that the crisis is much deeper and that it stems from intellectual causes as much as from legal ones. Information consumerism, like its older sibling energy consumerism, is a much more dangerous threat to democracy than the NSA.

the Kurds remained too divided and weak to become masters of their own fate able to establish a sovereign Kurdish homeland.

The chain of events began with the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein.

His attempts to eradicate Iraq's Kurdish population through chemical attacks in the Anfal campaign of the late 1980s and other aggressions in the region eventually led to the creation of a U.S.-imposed no-fly zone in northern Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War.

Iraq's Kurdish leadership put aside their differences to form the Kurdistan Regional Government

When U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq, a nervous Kurdistan looked to energy firms as their next-best insurance policy.

as tensions with Baghdad grew over the distribution of energy revenues, the Iraqi Kurds unexpectedly found a sponsor in Ankara.

a new strategy toward its Kurdish population. Instead of suppressing Kurdish autonomy with an iron fist, Ankara went from regarding Kurds as confused "mountain Turks" to recognizing Kurdish language and cultural rights and launching its most ambitious peace negotiation to date with the Kurdistan Workers' Party.

The Iranian regime was busy defending its allies in Syria and Lebanon while trying to manage a highly antagonistic relationship with the United States.

A cooperative Ankara, a weak Damascus, a preoccupied Tehran, an overwhelmed Baghdad and a host of anxious investors formed the ingredients for an audacious pipeline project.

As the pipeline construction progressed, Kurdish peshmerga forces continued spreading beyond formal Kurdistan Regional Government boundaries in disputed areas and held their ground against demoralized Iraqi army forces.

We have now arrived at the question of when, and not if, Kurdish oil will flow to Turkey without Baghdad's consent.

Turkey has put itself in a position where it can receive 250,000 to 300,000 barrels per day of crude from Iraqi Kurdistan

Plans are quietly being discussed to build another parallel line on the Turkish side to Ceyhan to completely divorce the pipeline infrastructure from any claims by Baghdad.

The speed and cunning with which the pipeline was completed demand respect, even -- however reluctantly -- from an outraged Baghdad.

For now, the United States is trying to avoid becoming entangled in this political morass, prioritizing its negotiation with Iran while publicly maintaining a "one Baghdad, one Iraq" policy.

the sharpest tools Iran and its allies in Baghdad have to undermine Turkey's alliance with the Kurdistan Regional Government are the Kurds themselves.

The past decade of Kurdish unity between Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan is highly anomalous and arguably temporary.

On the surface, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan have united their peshmerga forces into a single, unified ministry. In reality, the political lines dividing Peshmerga forces remain sharper than ever.

One does not even have to reach far back in history to get a sense of just how deep Kurdish rivalries can run. The Kurdistan Democratic Party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan were engaged in an all-out civil war from 1994 to 1996 that arose from a property dispute.

the Kurdistan Democratic Party reached out to Ankara for assistance, while the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan took help from Iran and even Saddam Hussein.

But matters of territorial integrity, financial sovereignty and nationalism are not easily trifled with at the intersection of empires.

"you know … we have a saying here. Kurdistan is a tree. After a long time, we grow tall, we become full of green leaves and then the tree shrivels and becomes bare. Right now, our leaves are green. Give it enough time. This tree won't die, but our leaves will fall to the ground again."