Winners and Losers Aspecter is haunting the Middle East. A little more than a quarter century after the Shah’s fall, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s wildest dreams seem to be coming true throughout the region, from the Gulf to the eastern Mediterranean. Where Iran has not engineered Washington’s failures, it has profited from them, and the regime means to ensure its role as the regional power and leader of the Muslim world with the bomb.The momentum shifted too fast for the Bush administration. After all, just a year ago, the White House felt vindicated if not triumphant as it watched its democratization program on the march throughout the Middle East. Syrian troops had withdrawn from Lebanon, the Iraqi insurgency appeared manageable, and Cairo and Riyadh were slowly bending to Washington’s desire to reshape the region in its own liberal, pluralist and democratic image. But when the Palestinians voted for a party that
