It will mean little if this is true:

Iran runs a network of agents in the six Arab monarchies of the Gulf that could be used to destabilise the region, a senior defector charged in an interview published in Dubai on Monday.

And what kind of headline have the editors chosen for this Peter Bergen article? Absurd.

Interestingly, one of the unnamed British officers invokes the Malayan insurgency as a comparison of their activites in Iraq.

The Malayan insurgency was a ‘low intensity’ war, in which the concept of ‘countergangs’ (pdf) was developed further by people like General Frank Kitson.

What few details that have dripped out into the major media outlets, appear to suggest these lessons (and those of the British in Aden, Kenya, Cyprus and Northern Ireland) were also being used in Iraq.

A family of four, including two children, have been killed in an overnight raid by international troops in Afghanistan, a police official and witnesses have said.

Meanwhile, American officials are “worried” about Nouri al-Maliki.