Iran and the US are now best of enemies
Venturing into airspace patrolled by the US military used to be a perilous business for Iranian pilots. Back in 1988, an American destroyer mistook an Iranian civilian aircraft for a warplane and blew the airliner out of the sky, killing 290 innocent people. Did that precedent cross the minds of the crew of the Iranian F-4 Phantom as they took off to bomb Daesh (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) positions in Iraq last Sunday?
If so, they need not have worried. The pilot and navigator might have been in danger from surface-to-air missiles fired by Daesh — or even from mechanical failure, given that their Phantom is an antiquated model, which first flew in 1958. But America, with the world’s mightiest air force, clearly had no interest in doing them any harm.
The Iranian air strikes, which probably involved a second Phantom, would have been tracked on the radar screens at Al Udeid airbase in Qatar. This military hub outside Doha serves as the headquarters of America’s offensive against Daesh. At any given time, serried ranks of B1 bombers and Globemaster transport aircraft can be seen beside Al Udeid’s runway. If American commanders had wanted to destroy Iran’s brace of Phantoms, they could have done so with a fraction of the power at their disposal.
Yet, they allowed Iran to go ahead and strike Daesh unmolested. In the process, America demonstrated the eternal relevance of the old dictum that “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”. As a Sunni zealot, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, the leader of Daesh, considers Iran’s Shiite regime to be despicable infidels, every bit as loathsome as America and the West. Suddenly, Baghdadi has managed to give America and Iran a common cause: Both have a vital interest in ensuring his defeat.
http://gulfnews.com/opinions/columnists/iran-and-the-us-are-now-best-of-enemies-1.1422599
