Joyner scores the Leverett and Ledeen debate:

I find that one rarely goes wrong taking the most pessimistic assumptions of both sides and assuming they’ll come true. Ledeen is almost certainly right that the United States and Iran are simply too far apart to come to an amicable general accord. It would be great if Iran would help us solve all our myriad problems in the region but they’ll only do so in those cases where they can’t afford to do otherwise.

But I agree with Leverett that the implosion of the Islamist regime is a neocon fantasy. ]]>