Iran is urging neighboring Arab states to drive the United States from its military bases in the Middle East and join a regional security alliance with Tehran, Associated Press has reported.

This statement came from Iran’s top security officer, Ali Larijani. AP reported, “The audacious offer was the strongest sign yet of Iran’s rising assertiveness in its contest with the United States for influence in the region.”

While Larijani’s words didn’t drive the Pentagon to close down its bases or throngs of Arab diplomats to sign a security alliance with Iran, their power was not lost on Iran’s neighbors. “We are completely vulnerable,” said one Kuwaiti professor. “We don’t want to antagonize the Iranians and at the same time we don’t want to upset the Americans.”

That is just the effect Iran intended to achieve—forcing Middle Eastern states to choose whether to remain allied with the U.S.-Israeli camp, or to join, in AP’s words, “an anti-American, anti-Israel alliance led by Iran.” Larijani’s statement was meant to divide those who support Iran from those who don’t—the Iranian equivalent of President Bush’s “either you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists.”

It is not difficult to see which of these two powers is gaining the most leverage in the Middle East. The U.S. right now is a cacophony of increasingly strong demands that the current administration bring the troops home. The Iraq Study Group’s recent report suggests that the U.S. accept the fact that it cannot solve the Iraq problem without help from Iran.

The fact is, Tehran has never been in a better strategic position, and it knows it.

As the U.S. contemplates a pullout from Iraq, Arab nations are having to take Iran more seriously. Though few may actually ally with it, the Islamic Republic, more than any other nation, clearly represents the future of the Middle East.