Foreign Confidential ™

Turkey, a full member of NATO that the Obama administration has hailed as a model "Islamic democracy," the MB, which the administration is "engaging", and Hamas--which the administration would also openly engage but for the organization's terrorist methods and avowed commitment to Israel's destruction--are all Sunni. Iran, of course, is a Shiite theocracy; and Syria is ruled by a regime that is dominated by Alawite Muslims, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Ahead of a conflict with nuclear-arming Iran that could engulf the region, players seem to be picking sides along traditional theological lines.

POSTSCRIPT: Notwithstanding Iran's past support for Hamas and assistance to Al Qaeda before and after 9/11, the Sunni-Shiite divide will probably not be bridged again until the present Iranian regime is replaced with a "moderate" (code for pragmatic and supposedly more pliable) Islamist version--another so-called Islamocracy. The Obama administration is not really interested in promoting genuine democracy, only Islamic/Islamist democracy. What is arguably the most-leftwing-ever administration in American history ironically sees rightwing political Islam as an unstoppable--and essentially progressive--force that can somehow be effectively exploited without once again blowing back as it did on 9/11 following the unleashing of the global jihad that resulted from America's covert intervention in Afghanistan on the Islamist side.