With the proposed decision to sell some $63 billion in weapons to Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and a number of the Persian Gulf States over the next 10 years, the United States has restored balance of power considerations to its regional foreign policy.
Gone were the neoconservatives' idealistic proclamations that the U.
S.
was seeking to transform the region into one populated by liberal democracies.
In its place was the sober assessment that power matters greatly and that an appropriate equilibrium of power is key to the regional stability essential to safeguarding U.
S.
allies and interests in the region.
This is a welcome, if not timely, development.
In the run-up to the 2008 U.
S.
election, America's regional allies have been closely monitoring domestic sentiments in the U.
S.
, as well as political decisionmaking in Washington to assess America's commitment to the region.
With Iraq no longer in a position to play counterweight to Iranian power, not to mention the genuine possibility that Iraq could evolve into a de facto Iranian satellite, the region's moderate Sunni states are particularly concerned about their future in the face of rising Iranian might.
At the heart of their concern is the question as to whether the United States remains willing to make the long-term effort to "balance" growing Iranian regional power or whether it will abandon the region and leave a power vacuum in its wake that would most likely be filled by Iran.
If a frustrated or weary U.
S.
retreats from the region, that development would have broad and potentially adverse consequences for the region's Sunnis and for America's regional partners.
Iran's theocratic leadership remains essentially an ideological revolutionary movement masquerading as a national government.
Iran's leaders see themselves as possessing the "Truth" from religion.
They believe that their nation is in the midst of a Manichean struggle of good vs.
evil.
In that epic struggle, Iran represents the forces of "good" and the U.
S.
is the "Great Satan.
" In their ideological fervor, its theocratic leaders continue to export Ayatollah Khomenei's Iranian Revolution whenever and wherever the opportunity arises.
For them, proxy wars of the kind initiated by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and various Shia allies in Iraq represent relatively low-cost strategic opportunities to further shift the balance of power in Iran's favor.
Moreover, based on U.
S.
difficulties in Iraq, the rising Taliban counteroffensive in Afghanistan, Hamas's takeover of the Gaza Strip, and Israel's failure to vanquish Hezbollah in Lebanon, they see Iran in the ascendancy.
Guided both by events and faith in their revolution, they believe that their success is both assured and inevitable.
This calculation creates a serious barrier to effective diplomacy and, if anything, magnifies the risk of future conflict.
So long as Iran's leaders are able to sustain their rigid worldview and maintain confidence in their ultimate success, they will have no meaningful inclination to compromise.
For them, compromise amounts to surrender at the hands of their ideological enemies.
Indeed, the negotiating approach former Secretary of State Dean Acheson once ascribed to the North Vietnam's communists in 1967 is at least as relevant to Iran's revolutionaries today.
Then, Acheson said that the Vietnamese communists "have a Clausewitz idea of negotiations.
" Under such a framework, he explained, "Negotiation is war carried out by other means and what they hope to do in a negotiation is not to bring about peace, but to disadvantage somebody in the course of a war, separate you from your allies, cause you domestic trouble at home, and so forth.
" However, such a situation does not mean that compromise is now hopeless, war is certain, or that Iran's outlook is fixed in stone.
A strong shift in the balance of power against Iran offers perhaps the best chance at fundamentally transforming the calculations behind Iran's policymaking and perhaps the greatest prospect to alter Iran's trajectory all the while avoiding an outbreak of hostilities.
Iran is currently suffering from substantial domestic problems.
Iran's economy has not realized the robust growth that the rise in world crude oil prices suggests should have taken place.
Instead, "Iran's economy is currently moving just on the edge of a collapse," Paris-based economics professor Fereydoon Khavand recently revealed.
There, a growing number of workers' salaries have not been paid in a timely fashion, teachers have protested low wages, gas stations have been burned in protests over gasoline rationing, and inflation has accelerated.
If Iran's ability to export its revolution is increasingly checked by the combination of a growing balance of power against it and economic difficulties that are weakening it from within, Iran's leaders will find themselves increasingly unable to divert domestic attention from the problems currently plaguing their nation.
This would put them in a deteriorating position that could erode their authority.
In such a condition, they would find themselves with a diminished ability to finance their regional proxies.
At the same time, they would be confronted with the choice of embracing reforms that could loosen their grip on power or launching increasingly harsh crackdowns at home that would sap their claims to legitimacy.
As Iran's ability to export its ideological revolution wanes, its attention turns inward, and its leaders' ambitions shrink, a more stable environment could begin to evolve in the Middle East.
The reduction in the ambitions of Iran's theocratic rulers would be especially beneficial to promoting regional stability.
Acts of aggression often occur when a state cannot achieve its overly large ambitions through the diplomatic process or with the reasoned consent of those affected.
The risk of aggression is highest when a state experiences both increasing ambitions among its leaders and virulent nationalism among a growing sector of its population.
Historic experience has demonstrated that the human appetite for power can surpass the restraints of rationality.
Once a leader's ambition overwhelms reason, his calculations become strongly biased toward the use of force.
Then, even Las Vegas-style odds become sufficiently attractive for such leaders to initiate military campaigns.
If the proposed U.
S.
arms sales are carried out and they tilt the regional balance of power against Iran, or at least meaningfully delay Iran's ability to achieve regional hegemony, that new equilibrium could provide the kind of contribution toward regional stability that "regime change" and idealistic pursuits could not.
If so, it would prove to be a sound geopolitical investment that would safeguard critical American interests and allies in the region.
Therefore, contrary to Iranian protests against the initiative and some international criticism that the U.
S.
is putting "additional explosives in a power keg" or "pouring oil on fire," the return of balance of power considerations in American foreign policymaking concerning the Middle East is a constructive development, and perhaps one that could not have come too soon.