Iran wants to be friends with the West. And especially with the United States. Friends.

And if not friends, at least...friendly.

“I don’t want to speak for them,” said Mohamed El-Baradei, now in his third term as director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), of Iran.

But of course he did, to a Newsweek reporter the week before the London bombings.

There’s no doubt Iran “would like to normalize their relationship, ultimately, with the US.”

Why?

Because, El-Baradei asserts, “Iran wants to be a major player in the whole Middle East, which is being reshaped right now.”

What’s in it for Iran?

Oh, the obvious things neocon ideologues like Bernard Lewis are always breathlessly bragging about — higher employment, wealth, superior plumbing, enough leisure and food to support individual morbid obesity, and what El-Baradei calls “the maximum technology” Iran needs to “modernize” — like “Airbus, Boeing.”

What’s in it for the coalition? How about that brave new world order they always talk about? How about peace, or relatively peace, in the Middle East?

How about at least knowing a bit more about when and where Al-Qaeda will strike?

Or maybe even how to make Al-Qaeda go away, since Western traditional military intervention is miserably failing?

Or how to handle the Shariah law regime that Iraqis are determined to create for themselves, despite incessant tutelage by US Judge Advocate General officers who currently are running Iraq’s legal system?

What’s the alternative?

To keep taking the same old tired advice from Israel and other neocons?

Look at how Israelis live — besieged.

The US probably didn’t intend to, but in Iraq it has created a little Israel with all the same horrendous security issues where before, there was just a vaguely menacing, second-rate autocratic tyrant and an army without shoes, without firepower, and almost certainly without weapons of mass destruction.

Iran wants to “modernize.”

Imagine the possibilities for the beleaguered West...and imagine Israel’s fear. Fear of nuclear holocaust? No.

That’s what outfits like MEMRI and The Hudson Institute may seek to promote, but it’s not realistic, given Pakistan and India’s possession of the same weaponry.

And on the same logic, Israel could quake in fear at the new emerging “alliance” between France and Germany, which comes at a time when Europe can agree on a common currency, but not much else, at least politically.

Rather, what Israel now fears is that the United States may well seek a new way of handling the Middle East.

A fresh look at an old, troubling situation.

Making new friends tends to do that.

Old friends find themselves no longer the flavor of the month.

But Iran can offer something the West needs right now — information, intelligence pertinent to the region and unbiased by nationalist Zionist aims, and also the possibility of getting the armed divisions of Hamas and Hezbollah under control. And so far, for whatever reasons, Israel, the West’s so-called “only fellow democracy in the Middle East,” has come up notoriously short in all these areas.

The mullas may vehemently reject the vices that the West considers modern technology’s modern accoutrements — booze, miniskirts, tight jeans, uncovered female heads, boopsie “artists” like Brittney and Madonna, overt homosexual displays in the street; and so much more about the West that we popularly consider “freedom.” But it’s the West’s mistake to view the mullas’ resistance as backwardness.

Iran’s mullas see the future, perhaps better than the West does, at least as far as the Middle East is concerned.

And, as El-Baradei observes so presciently, for Iranians the future “is not just the nuclear issue, it is the whole future of the Middle East, it is the whole future of regional security, global security.”

The mullas want Iran to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Israel wants to keep Iran as part of the problem, hence justifying its own possession of nuclear weapons of mass destruction and apartheid-like policies.

But unlike Israel, mired in its own endless re-enactment of its cultural past, Iran’s mullas can see the present clearly.

The Holy Qur’an gives Muslims and all who read it deeply this gift, for it is written in the voice of the eternal present.

The mullas aren’t misled by grandiose neocon ideas like Francis Fukayama’s provocatively-titled, much-bought but little-read book, “The End of History,” a Hegelian mishmash heralding the supposed triumph of the West over all dimensions of human existence.

It is just such grandiose and self-delusional ideas of cultural and moral superiority that led the US and its coalition partners into its current Iraqi quagmire.

Iran’s mullas know that the past repeats, the present’s here always, and the future is just a promise of the next possibility.

Israel’s claim to be the West’s best advisor on Middle East is now proved to be a miserable, self-serving falsehood that not even many Israelis believe anymore.

And if Israel fears Iran possessing nuclear technology so greatly, ask why did it sell Iran munitions for years, even after the Shah’s fall?

In America, the government fought a terrorist war of sorts for decades with the Italian Mafia and other associated gangland groups who were both feared and admired.

Not long ago, this bit of history was immortalized in a popular book and film, “The Godfather: “And if the Godfather himself were here today, he’d tell Bush and Blair that the key to peace among the Middle East’s diverse, warring “families” is not fighting a dirty street war, but to “keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”

It’s time for Bush to jettison failed neoconism, and return to real politics. Time to make new friends. Or at least, keep our enemies closer.