More on Iran

I think Kos did a much better job of explaining what the implications are for Iraq's elections in terms of their relationship with Iran:

What's more, that "nice Shiite democracy" will be allied with the administration's latest boogeyman -- Iran, and is already starting to exhibit Taliban-like tendencies. So if we had a nice Shiite democracy, we could at least salvage something from this quagmire Bush dragged us into. Instead, it looks like we did Iran's dirty work for them -- installing a fundamentalist Islamic government allied with one of the US's top foreign enemies.

Further, the situation no longer seems to be isolated to Iran:

(link)

Iran and Syria heightened tension across the Middle East and directly confronted the Bush administration yesterday by declaring they had formed a mutual self defence pact to confront the "threats" now facing them.

This was also interesting:

Syria and Iran do not have a natural affinity but are alleged by western governments to have engaged in covert military cooperation in the past.

So how on earth it can be said that the invasion of Iraq has functioned to stabilze the region is really beyond me. The converse seems to be occurring. I guess one could say that in the long term there may be some stability in the region as a result, but that's entirely speculative and pretty silly seeing as how everything seems to be pointing in the opposite direction.
What I think is interesting is that the last sentence cited implies that there really hasn't been a substantial relationship between Iran and Syria to mertit calling them part of an "axis of evil", but as what appears to be a direct result of U.S. foreign policy that all seems to be changing. Of course, if this administration then turns around and says something like "see, we told you so" my head is just going to fucking explode.