It’s 9.11, it’s Obama’s war, with “help” (Iran) on the way.

Persian Army Attacking Alexander's Forces, 333 B.C.

In his 9.11-eve primetime address to the nation, Barack Obama took America into Syria, and back into Iraq. Our recent blog entries have focused on Obama’s emerging effort to build a coalition against the “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” (ISIS). Now the effort is out in the open. And look who’s standing in the wings, as predicted here earlier. Iran!

According to the BBC:

Iran's Supreme Leader has approved co-operation with the US as part of the fight against Islamic State (IS) in Iraq, sources have told BBC Persian. Ayatollah Khamenei has authorised his top commander to co-ordinate military operations with the US, Iraqi and Kurdish forces, sources in Tehran say. . . CNN's Christiane Amanpour. . . tweeted that Iraqi President Fuad Masum had told her as much on Thursday. . . However, Iran's foreign ministry . . . spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham told Iran's Press TV the report was not correct.

A “BBC Persian” analysis added:

Iran's change of heart will no doubt be welcomed in Washington and London, where a joint strategy is taking shape towards creating a broad alliance of international and regional players to deal with the IS threat.

One of the things we learn in life is not to let the immediate crowd out the important. The ISIS threat is “the immediate”. The Iran threat is “the important”.

Obama is lining up the traditional Sunni authoritarians--Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates--against the radical Sunni threat ISIS. In the next wave, he is after Shia already pre-disposed to go after Sunni, including Iran, Iraq's Shia, and Hezbollah, as well as Iran Sunni allies Turkey, Qatar, and Hamas.

Are we really partnering with Iran? And what about Syria’s Basher Assad? So far, we say Assad remains an enemy.

Iran coming aboard our ship is the important threat.  Here from former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, in the Wall Street Journal:

You want to think [Obama] is playing a cool. . . watching new alliances form—wasn't that the Kurds the other day fighting alongside the Iranians? Obama's supporters frankly hope that there's a method to the madness, that he is quietly, behind the scenes and with great subtlety pulling together a coalition that will move. But this is more hope than knowledge. [emphasis added]

We will see at the UN September 24, when Obama chairs the Security Council, who shows up and exactly how importantly Iran treats the event.

Of course, ISIS is a real enemy. But so is Iran, a nation whose supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, calls Israel “the wolfish and child killer regime,” the only solution for which “is its destruction.” The “final solution”? From our “partner” Iran?

Do our leaders see clearly the threat we face? Not if you listen to Hillary Clinton, in her review of Henry Kissinger’s book on World Order:

International problems and solutions are increasingly centered, in ways both good and bad, on nongovernmental organizations, businesses and individual citizens. As a result, foreign policy is now as much about people as it is about states. Kissinger rightly notes that these shifts require a broader and deeper order than sufficed in the past.

Clinton and Kissinger are right that world power has moved beyond the nation state leaders both so readily access. But Clinton’s list completely overlooks religion and the power it holds, Islamic extremism in particular, whether Sunni or Shia.

A colossal oversight and a dangerous one.