By Debbie Schlussel
You know what’s hilarious? The Obama Administration’s new idea to enlist Iran to combat the Afghan drug trade, that’s what’s hilarious.

Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s new point man on Afghanistan and Pakistan, is expected to engage Iran as part of a broad effort to stabilize Afghanistan and combat the country’s growing drug trade, according to officials briefed on the special representative’s plans.
Many in the Obama administration believe that Iran and the U.S. share common interests when it comes to Afghanistan, these officials said. . . . And these officials said they believe Iran may be willing to work with the U.S. to strengthen the fragile government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Mr. Holbrooke is expected to seek Iran’s support for a renewed international effort to combat Afghanistan’s growing drug trade. Iran has one of the highest opium-addiction rates in the world, and Iranian authorities have long pushed U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in Afghanistan to take stronger measures to combat opium production and trafficking there.

I’m laughing my rear off . . . for several reasons.
1) One of Iran’s biggest cash cows is pot and coke sales. Have Holbrooke and President Obama never heard of the Bekaa Valley? It’s the part of Lebanon controlled by Iranian-controlled Hezbollah, where the top crops are marijuana and the coca leaf.
We’re enlisting the world’s largest coke and pot dealers to help us stop Afghanistan from being opium dealers?! Am I the only one who sees the absurd irony in this?
What’s next–Are we gonna enlist the Gambino family to put the Lucchese family out of business?
2) Afghanistan is a Sunni Muslim country. Iran is Shi’ite. Newsflash: Sunnis and Shi’ites hate each other. And the only time the two groups work together is to fight America, Israel, and the west.
Yes, I know that Iran has given a ton of financial aid to Afghanistan (a drop in the bucket compared to what we’ve given the country), but taking money is one thing. Taking dictation is another.
Ya think a Sunni country is gonna dump its cash cow opium drug dealing so that a Shi’ite country can’t be the world’s dominant drug dealer? I can only see the reaction of Al-Qaeda-allied poppy farmers in the mountains and countryside of Afghanistan and their response to being told by Shia Iran that they can’t grow their cash crop illicit drug, while Iran’s Hezbollah continues to grow its cash crop illicit drug.
3) Do we really want extremist Iran–on the State Department list as a terrorist-sponsor state and key sponsor of Hezbollah, HAMAS, and Syrian terrorism–to be the “mentor” for Afghanistan? From the clutches of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban to the clutches of Hezbollah and Khomeiniland? Is this what our soldiers continue to die for in Afghanistan?
Yet another dumb move in the extremely stupid Obama Iran-empowerment program. Just what we need, Iran asserting itself over the entire region, at a time when the Shi’ite revolution is already a major problem in world stability.
Like I said, I’m laughing my rear off. (It’s more convenient than crying.) And so is anyone who knows a thing about this region and its competing Muslim factions . . . which apparently includes no one on the Obama foreign policy team.
I guessed they smoked too many doobies in college. Or in Obama’s case, snorted too many lines of coke.
I’ve heard of “Most Favored Nation Status,” but “Most Favored Drug-Dealer Nation Status” is ludicrous.