Iranian Resurrection.

Holding sway over a third of the Middle East and blackmailing 55 percent of the world's oil reserves, Iran is looking more and more like a superpower. Tehran has not achieved this through classic imperialism--invasion and occupation--but rather through a three-pronged strategy of proxy warfare, asymmetrical weapons and an appeal to the Middle East's downtrodden. If Tehran's ascendance continues, it will not be a rising China or Russia that challenges the United States for global supremacy--it will be Iran.

Right now, Tehran's proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, is the de facto state. With friendly governments in Damascus and Baghdad, Iran intends to put the rest of the Levant under its thumb. The power of America's traditional allies, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, is diminishing at a time when Iranian influence is spreading across the Palestinian territories and the Gulf sheikhdoms. Iran is quietly but inexorably building an empire, securing territory, resources, raw economic power, military strength and the allegiance of the "oppressed." If Iran's rise continues, it will find itself at the heart of Middle East oil and at the apex of power.

Yet, American Iran-watchers tend to dismiss Tehran as a serious power. They point out that Iran spends only 2.5 percent of its GDP on its military, its air force is antiquated, and even its relatively new Russian and Chinese arms are in disrepair. Iran does not represent a conventional military threat to the United States, they believe, and Tehran's military forces would succumb to a Western attack almost as quickly as did Saddam's. Iran is seen as a remote enemy, little more than an irritant, one we could easily dispatch given the political will.

Americans' views are colored by the belief that Iran is on the edge of revolution. With double-digit inflation and double-digit unemployment, the mullahs there cannot hold on very much longer, or so goes conventional analysis. It's only a matter of time before the Iranian revolution collapses completely and we will, at long last, find relief in a pro-Western Iranian government, one as compliant as was the Shah's on national-security issues.

A comforting delusion. In reality, Tehran is expanding and consolidating its power in unstable parts of the Middle East. The military balance with Iran is clearly worsening vis-a-vis the Gulf Arab states, as well as more distant countries like Egypt. America views Iran's military capabilities as limited; Iran does not pose a military threat to either its neighbors or the West. This is a laughable proposition to those between the Strait of Hormuz and the Mediterranean Sea. Though Iran may not be strong in terms of the laundry list Washington uses to calculate power--tanks, guns, armor, aircraft carriers--Iran has developed a different sort of mastery in projecting power. It possesses effective military strength, in the sense that it controls popular and lethally efficient guerilla groups. And in Lebanon and Iraq it manipulates sovereign armies. Iran's military might, through its proxies and allies, in fact vastly eclipses that of its neighbors.