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"The Islamic Republic of Iran is today challenging the world. The Iranian leadership's appetite for power is growing, for they have become thoroughly convinced that no outside power-the U.S. included-will derail their rise to regional and even global prominence. "Whether you like it or not," the Iranian cleric and politician Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, an influential figure and on-and-off mentor to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, publicly boasted to the U.S., "you have to regard Iran as a great power in the political sphere. The people of Iran have realized there is nothing you can do to us now or will be capable of doing [in the future]. So rather than using all your resources in failed attempts to oppose Iran, you should work with us."[1]

Khatami's statement, like many other recent pronouncements made by the Islamic Republic's leaders, underscores why Iran has not complied with years of American demands for full transparency in its nuclear programs, for putting a halt to its sponsorship of terrorism and propagation of militant Islam or Islamism globally, and for cooperation in regional affairs. Simply put, the Islamic Republic's ruling politicians no longer fear America; they believe the U.S. and its allies have lost the political will to preserve the current order. Tehran, therefore, no longer worries about the repercussions of pursuing an ever-more ambitious policy aimed at refashioning the international order and extending Irani... >>>