@Alon @asayeed @BenRossTransit It's hard to distinguish between what is cynical and what is structural with respect to Iran's behavior. You may be right that, under some future hypothetical settlement, their inclination would become Westphalian. or perhaps they are pan-Islamist, and would have a Tehran based new metropole for that. (obviously, very longstanding intra-Islam sectarian distinctions complicate that.) for now, they are profoundly an anti-Westphalian force.