Thoughts from Spengler:

Muslim civilization is in catastrophic decline. It is passing from infancy to senescence without ever reaching maturity. Iran has one last bulge generation of military age men, born before the fertility collapse got underway. It perceives one last historic opportunity to achieve Shi’ite dominance. It won’t have another.

It is too much to hope that the establishment will draw the appropriate strategic conclusions from this “mysterious” trend, as Ignatius obtusely characterizes it.

The point of my 2006 studies in Iran’s demographics was not academic: I argued that a demographic cataclysm helped explained the apocalyptic mindset of the Iranian leadership, which felt that it had nothing to lose by betting everything on a Shi’ite resurgence under the umbrella of nuclear.

It’s certainly too much to hope that an Obama administration will get it, particularly with John Brennan as DCI.