Asks this weeks ECONOMIST magazine
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=10608425
WHO would have thought that a friendless theocracy with a Holocaust-denying president, which hangs teenagers in public and stones women to death, could run diplomatic circles around America and its European allies? But Iran is doing just that. And it is doing so largely because of an extraordinary own goal by America's spies, the team behind the duff intelligence that brought you the Iraq war.
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=10608425