Daniel Pipes in der Washington Times:
Looking ahead, Iran represents the Middle East’s greatest danger and its greatest hope. Its nuclear buildup, terrorism, ideological aggressiveness, and formation of a „resistance bloc“ present a truly global threat, ranging from jumping the price of oil and gas to an electro-magnetic pulse attack on the United States. But if these dangers can be navigated, controlled, and subdued, Iran has a unique potential to lead Muslims out of the dark night of Islamism toward a more modern, moderate, and good neighborly form of Islam. As in 1979, that achievement will likely affect Muslims far and wide.
Contrarily, while the Turkish government presents few immediate dangers, its more subtle application of Islamism’s hideous principles makes it loom large as future threat. Long after Khomeini and Osama bin Laden are forgotten, I venture, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his colleagues will be remembered as the inventors of a more lasting and insidious form of Islamism.
Thus may today’s most urgent Middle Eastern problem country become tomorrow’s leader of sanity and creativity while the West’s most stalwart Muslim ally over five decades turn into the greatest source of hostility and reaction. Extrapolation is a mug’s game, the wheel turns, and history springs surprises.
