Iran has clearly been a hotbed of issues for thousands of years; however, recent developments have proven that the Supreme Leader has little to no fear of outside interference. The tide has turned in such a way that rouge states have the upper-hand simply because they believe that the only viable options on the table for the UN or the US are empty threats and meaningless sanctions. With other terror threats spreading US militaries thin and wearing on home moral, Iran threatens to spit nuclear paper wads while the teacher is busy in the hall.
The single largest issue in play is the erosion of ‘Western’ supremacy. Whatever your opinion of American foreign policy, a century of dominance kept Iranian tension inside its borders (though with some local exceptions). While the US never actually had direct control of Iran, the model of periphery decay applies much the same as it does with many great imperial powers of the past. Ancient Rome began its downward slide many decades before its final ‘fall.’ A good example of this is their control of what is now much of Great Britain. When Rome was strong, they could afford to bulk up military assets on the island and wage a long-term pseudo cold-war. As tension at home in the form of infighting, poverty, and often poor leadership shifted the policy of strength and offence to one of preservation, local peoples rose to drive out the weak Roman forces along with many of their cultural attributes in an effort to restore what they felt had been overshadowed or taken from them for so many years by a foreign power. Later, the same islands saw the decline of the British Empire with the gradual independence of colonies into the mid-20th century. As Imperial power weakened, local nationals could vie for freedom (or slowly rip the decaying limbs of the empire apart, depending on your perspective).
As American power weakens – or is even perceived to have weakened abroad, there will be more nations like Iran. While the belief of American exceptionalism may still be true for some of us, President Ahmadinejad and others are no longer intimidated by the world police force that had belonged to the United States for so many years.
