The Iranians Love the US!

I was listening to NPR a couple of days back when Abbas Milani, the director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University made an interesting observation: Iran is an interesting case in American opinion in the Middle East. Across the region, we have governments that are somewhat friendly to Washington, while the people hate the US. Iran is the oddball where the government hates the US, describing it as evil, while public opinion of the US is indeed very high. He cautions that in our efforts to contain Iran, we would do well not to damage that public opinion.

Meanwhile, a second aircraft carrier has moved to a strategic position relative to Iran. While this is possibly posturing, the risk we face is that if the Iranians make a "wrong" move, we might find an escalation on our hands.