Either way, congratulations to Slate for reducing politics in the Middle East to three types of smileys. Their readers must love that kind of stuff.
Simplification is a good thing. And the middle east desperately needs some. Sure, the foreign ministries of the world shouldn't use this chart, but that's not really the audience here.
I disagree. After more than a decade of "good vs. evil" and "either with us or with the enemy" propaganda, what the audience needs is the precise opposite of this type of chart.