The World - U.S.-Iran rivalry has a familiar look - Like the Cold War, the nations' struggle across the Mideast makes use of proxies, propaganda and economic pressure.
BEIRUT — In the Gaza Strip, Islamists aided by Iran finish off forces loyal to Washington's ally, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
To the east, in Iraq and Afghanistan, governments attempt to prevent their nations from turning into proxy battlegrounds.
In the warm waters of the Persian Gulf, U.S. and Iranian warships nearly bump up against one another.
The new Middle East is starting to look like the old Cold War, with a familiar script and slightly altered cast.
The confrontation between the United States and Iran, which overlays and drives much of the strife afflicting the Middle East, crystallizes most visibly here in Lebanon, where hundreds of Iran-backed Hezbollah militants remain camped out in tents next door to the lavishly restored Ottoman-era Grand Serail, home to the pro-Western government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.
"The police barricades between the tent city and the prime minister -- that's Checkpoint Charlie," said Rami G. Khouri, a journalist and a scholar at the American University of Beirut, referring to the crossing between East and West Berlin during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States.
"This is the front line of the new regional global confrontation," Khouri said. "It is exactly like the Cold War in the combination of tools and means that people are using on both sides to confront each other."
At stake is political, military and cultural dominion over the volatile oil-rich Middle East and influence over the direction of the Muslim world.
The Bush administration says it is pushing for secular values, free trade and democracy. It is joined by allies in Europe and those Sunni Arab oligarchs in the Middle East who are unsettled by the challenge to the status quo posed by the rise of Iran, a Shiite Muslim nation.
Newly radicalized Iran presses for values and power structures based on Islam and tradition. Its allies and proxies include powerful grass-roots Islamic organizations such as Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as much of the government in Baghdad, and the Syrian regime in Damascus. All but the government in Baghdad are longtime official pariahs to the United States.
It is a complicated conflict with many features of the 45-year Cold War, including the use of military and political surrogates, aggressive diplomacy, economic pressure, competing propaganda outlets and a looking-glass war waged by intelligence services.
