EVERYBODY LOVES IRAN. One interesting result of the latest Pew Global Attitudes survey (PDF) is the high level of Muslim support for the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Pluralities in Egypt and Jordan and a majority in Pakistan say they want to see Iran get the Bomb. That's not opposition to American military intervention in Iran, that's people actually favoring Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons on the merits. Thirty percent of Indonesians and 23 percent of Turks are also on board.
I think you're seeing here the poisonous fruits of the "clash of civilizations" dynamic that we've been drifting toward for years now. And suffice it to say that this is very bad news. When people's level of dislike for American hegemony is growing so intense that they start looking on things like Iranian nukes as a positive development, we have a problem. In part, it's a serious problem for our Iran policy. In part, it's a symptom of an underlying issue that's going to create problems for us all over the map.
--Matthew Yglesias
