UNLIKELY ALLIES: STEPHEN BROWN
Unlikely Allies Posted by Stephen Brown
http://frontpagemag.com/2010/12/07/unlikely-allies/
THE ARAB LOGIC HERE IS THAT ISRAEL IS LESS A THREAT THAN IRAN…AND THEN WHEN IRAN IS “SEDATED” THEY CAN RESUME THEIR DEATH WISH FOR ISRAEL…..RSK
Sometimes, the things that are not said speak the loudest.
This certainly applies to the recently released WikiLeaks documents, which revealed some Arab governments are urging the United States to attack Iran in order to stop its nuclear weapons program. In a meeting in 2008 with American diplomats, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia himself urged America to “cut off the head of the snake,” strong language usually reserved for Israel.
Similar to other WikiLeaks items such as Russia being run by a mafia, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States calling for an invasion of Iran is not a startling revelation. Shiite Iran and the Sunni Saudi kingdom have been locked in a Cold War for supremacy of the Islamic world since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Each regards itself as representing the true Islam, while the despised other represents heresy. It is a religious and political conflict, sometimes violent, that today spans the Islamic world from Nigeria to Pakistan and has even resulted in riots and deaths during the Hajj in Mecca.
“Iran’s goal is to cause problems,” King Abdullah said in a WikiLeaks release. “There is no doubt something unstable about them.”
But AsiaTimes columnist Spengler (a literary pseudonym) maintains the biggest surprise contained in the WikiLeaks documents so far is what was not said. Spengler points out there was no mention by Arab governments of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While Western liberal-leftist media outlets, academics and even President Obama appear obsessed with the “Israeli occupation” and the building of Israeli settlements in Jerusalem, Arab diplomats did not refer to these alleged impasses to Middle Eastern peace even once.
This does not mean that Arab countries do not want the Palestinians to have their own state. Some would undoubtedly even be very happy to see Israel disappear from the map. But Arab governments know the Jewish state represents no threat to them, and never has, unlike Iran, whose aggression, they fear, will only increase if the mullah-run state acquires nuclear weapons. Moreover, a solution to the Israeli-Palestine conflict, while desirable, would not stop Iran’s plans for a Shiite block, backed by nuclear weapons, from which it could then intimidate and dominate the rest of the Islamic world.
“There has never been a shred of evidence that an Israeli-Palestinian agreement would help contain Iran’s nuclear threat,” states Spengler.
But whatever gains Iran may hope to accrue from its nuclear weapons program have probably been negated by the fact it has united the Arab world against it. Iran had depended on the Arab countries remaining disunited while it fulfilled its nuclear ambitions. Instead, as one analyst commented, Iran has turned itself into an “Arabian nightmare,” setting off a potentially deadly confrontation with the Arab world.
Iran obviously did not learn from Saddam Hussein’s example. When the Iraqi dictator became too militarily strong and belligerent toward his neighbors, Arab countries like Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia did not hesitate to join an American-led coalition in the first Gulf War to end the Iraqi threat and restore the region’s balance of power. Syria, for example, contributed about 30,000 troops to Desert Storm.
There is, however, one big difference between then and now, and it lies in the White House. In the early 1990s, with the senior George Bush in the president’s office, the Arab states could rely on the United States to pull its chestnuts out of the fire and use its military to restore the status quo. Now, with Obama in charge, it is highly unlikely America will come to the Arabs’ rescue this time and launch an attack on Iran.
Comments are closed.
