A millenium before the birth of the United States, the Abbasid Dynasty was already settling in for its 500-year reign in Baghdad. If U.S. policy in the Gulf is to have any chance of advancing American interests at an acceptable cost, it must point the way to a modus vivendi in which friendly and unfriendly actors, benign and dangerous alike, can coexist and function peacefully. This problem is not going to go away. All that lacks is the solution.
