Bear in mind that he was raised in an environment more like an open bazaar than a small town with shops. The difference extends to a lot of things about how you see and treat with others. The bazaar mindset is geared around face-to-face adversarial negotiation. One may lie, exaggerate, beat one's chest or threaten in order to win a bettrer position in the bargain. Shop keepers, on the other hand, find better long term leverage in putting known process on everything and not doing much in the way of negotiations on the shop floor. It is less anchored to their egos.

I doubt Iraq would slide over to an Iranian alliance.

But I have been wrong before, IIRC....


A