AP Photo

Readers often ask why it is that threatened by Iran, Syria, terrorist violence and revolutionary Islamists, Arab regimes don’t cooperate more with the West or actively seek to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Sure, they do some things – Jordan and Egypt made peace with Israel, there is some real work with the West, as in the rescue of Kuwait from Iraqi aggression in 1991. But why not much more, on the level that could achieve more stability in the region?

One reader wrote: These despots don’t seem cunning to me at all.