Obama and the Middle East Dilemma

While everyone stares at the ever shifting, ever blurring Syrian Chemical Weapons red line which is now befuddling the White House, the Syrian civil war continues to wind on and on eventually to determine who will prove supreme, bad or worse. There is no good side to choose in this fight. It now comes down to Assad backed by Iran and Hezballah, the Syrian Free Army which is backed largely by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the al Nusra Front which represents al-Qaeda and even should Bashar Assad be toppled there will still be Hezballah allied with the IRGC guerilla forces attempting to preserve the influence of their Iranian masters. As far as the United States is concerned there is no actual good guy for them to back though President Obama has appeared to have a soft spot for the Muslim Brotherhood in the past.

 

The one democratic country which is very concerned over the eventual results and intermediate activities in Syria is, of course, Israel. While the Israelis are not particularly fond of any of the players, their previous knowledge of Assad may make him the least troublesome of the evils for Israel. Do not misunderstand that Assad would make Israeli leaders overjoyed as they have fought three conflicts against his forces; one in the Six Day War in 1967, once again when both Syria and Egypt launched the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and their final conflict was an air war over the Bekaa Valley in 1982 where the Israelis knocked sixty Syrian fighters from the skies in two days of dog fights losing absolutely no planes themselves. For the memory of these defeats Bashar al-Assad might be sufficiently gun shy that would make his remaining in power preferable to having to teach a new leader the perils of engaging the IDF from scratch.

 

Whatever the eventual result of the civil war in Syria the one thing Israel absolutely cannot allow is for Iran or anybody else to funnel new and more dangerous weapon systems to Hezballah in Lebanon. This is what spurred the recent air raids by the Israelis on Damascus and along the Syrian-Lebanon border over the past week. The Israelis were removing transports carrying new weapon systems which would have posed a serious increase in the threat potential of Hezballah. One can only imagine what such systems might have entailed as Hezballah already possesses at a minimum sixty-thousand rockets of various ranges with which to threaten Israel. Despite such a seemingly overwhelming threat potential, Iran has still decided it is worth the possible losses to attempt to further arm Hezballah in order to turn their threat into a certainty that Tel Aviv would be decimated in return for any actions taken against the Iranian nuclear program. Iran has made it very certain that it matters not who attacks their nuclear program, Israel will receive the brunt of the Iranian response through Hezballah and Hamas and Syria providing Syria is still a part of the Iranian Shiite Crescent across the Middle East.

 

Meanwhile, back in Washington DC President Obama is doing a number of pirouettes on the head of a pin trying to avoid being pinned down to his red line should Syria use chemical weapons threat. Syria has, according to Israeli, French, British and even most United States sources, already deployed Sarin nerve agent against the rebel forces and civilians. There have been reports of multiple usages yet President Obama continues to squirm and wrestle with these facts attempting to twist them into a cloud of doubts in order to back away from the precipice and avoid actually being forced to act. The problem President Obama is facing is that he really miscalculated when making a threat he never expected to have to ever face. Now that reality has not only caught up but has swept past his threat of action crossing over his red line, President Obama must now fudge the facts and blow enough smoke that he can claim that his red line was more flexible and has remained inviolate, but with his red line not only crossed but rather obliterated, President Obama has been left appearing completely toothless in all ways concerning Syrian use of chemical weapons.

 

There is one huge problem beyond the simple fact that President Obama has been rendered impotent concerning events in Syria; all of his threats and posturing over the Iranian nuclear program are now mute and meaningless. This can only serve to make the Iranian nuclear weapons threat even more potent as it is now obvious that President Obama never actually intended to ever take action in order to prevent the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons. This leaves all of Europe as well as Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the other nations within the GCC, and anyone else who Iran may see as an opponent directly in the crosshairs of a potential nuclear Iran. What makes things even more clouded is that now all of the intelligence information which originated with the United States or was heavily influenced by the United States now cannot be considered to be anything other than a ruse to prevent the appearance of a need to act. This is very likely to cause a complete reevaluation of the entire Iranian situation by Israel at the very least. The backing away from his red line by President Obama has resulted in the entire world now realizing that they are on their own when it comes to the Iranian threats. This can only lead to a more dangerous Middle East, like anybody thought such was even possible.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

World Suffers from Palestine Fever

Last Friday Finland and Denmark became the latest European countries to upgrade the status of the Palestinian Authority diplomatic missions to full-fledged Embassy status placing them on an equal status with every other nation in the world. The Palestinian entity is now treated by the United Nations, UNESCO, many countries, NGOs, many religious organizations as well as their ruling councils and now also by Google as being a real nation despite their glaring deficiencies. The Palestinians have no independent currency, no borders, no established capital city, and the population possesses no individual identity which serves to differentiate them from the surrounding native populations. But why allow such minor items get in the way of granting premature recognition to the Palestinian entity and in the process snub Israel presenting them with what amounts to a preemptive establishment of Palestinian statehood without demanding them to reach an agreement and have an actual treaty with Israel when one can simply forgo such technicalities. I would like to be able to believe that when Mahmoud Abbas has gathered sufficient nations who have granted them equal status as a national state as they have such others as the United States, France, England, China, India, Brazil, Australia, and the rest of the almost two-hundred nations of the United Nations that he will also receive their support in declaring whatever borders he chooses.

 

I can honestly visualize the day coming within a decade when Mahmoud Abbas will stand before the United Nations General Assembly and demand that they resolve to have the member nations to assist in every manner necessary to establish the state of Palestine within its natural borders from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean sea and receiving a standing ovation right before an overwhelming consensus vote affirming his request. This vote would necessitate another vote follow it where the United Nations finally would affirm that it has discussed but never approved before, a vote to rescind the United Nations General Assembly declaration which allowed the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel. Then the world will have chosen to stand behind the Palestinians and enforce their desire to not just form their state within borders sharing the land with Israel, but to form their state in place of and atop the corpse of the state of Israel. Can there be much doubt as to the inevitability of such a ruling when the vote to establish a Palestinian state over the objections and in denial of United Nations Security Council resolutions pertaining to the establishment of said state by the astounding affirmation of one-hundred-thirty-eight votes in favor, nine votes against and forty-one abstentions? And once this precedent has been established, what country would remain safe, independent, and free from being dissolved by a vote of the United Nations that was then used to align all the power of all the world’s militaries against them to erase whatever state fell on the wrong side of the masses who would then hold the powers of fate to thusly destroy any nation they so desired.

 

Would anybody actually be surprised if the United Nations General Assembly once they had established the legitimate power to dissolve any nation that the Non-Aligned Movement groups of one-hundred-twenty member nations and seventeen observer nations would not use their overwhelming majority in the United Nations General Assembly to realign the world in their favor at the expense of those whom they accuse of having oppressed, exploited and pilfered them and their resources by the colonial and imperial nations as well as the industrialized world? The only reason such has not yet been acted upon has been that limitations placed on the powers of the United Nations General Assembly while the main authority and the right and power to resolve for the use of force was reserved solely to the United Nations Security Council. This is much of what has been behind an ever growing demand to reform the Security Council to allow a realignment of those countries holding permanent status, removal of the veto power of the permanent status members allowing them to prevent any action by their simple vote without having to give any reasons, and strip or dilute the powers of the Security Council and transferring many of those powers either exclusively to the General Assembly or at a minimum a share of such powers. Once such a revolutionary reconstruction and redefinition of the powers and responsibilities within the branches of the United Nations has been enacted even should it require a complete rewrite of the United Nations Charter, does anyone really feel safe that this would not lead inevitably to a conflagrative conflict that would envelop the world and leave in its wake a world in ruins with most of its major cities having been laid waste and starvation being the normal state of existence persisting for an indeterminate amount of time while the world attempted to rebuild from the ashes. This would not be the aim or even the desire of those who would initially support dissolving the Jewish state of Israel and replacing it with the twenty-second Arab state established for those claiming to be a separate peoples known as Palestinians, but it would be the eventuality which such inevitably would spawn. That is the one problem when expedience trumps thought, there will always be unexpected consequences hiding in the shadows of the future, and they would often be dire and extremely undesirable. But caution has proven not to be a welcome element when emotions run hot and actions are the result of the moment coming into fruition free of restraining contemplation. I have realized that if you do not think things through before acting you usually find yourself later asking yourself what was I thinking.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Is Attack on Iran Necessarily Dangerous?

Read virtually any news source for a week on the global scene and there will be at least one person quoted claiming that for Israel, the United States, or anybody else to attack Iran over their nuclear program would be foolhardy, dangerous, risky, disastrous, catastrophic or a calamity. In virtually every case the claim is that since no attack upon the Iranian nuclear facilities will permanently end Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, any attack therefore falls short of the goal making it a failure. The argument is always in absolutes as if an attack must result in a total end and not simply a delay pushing the date for attaining weapons status further down the road. You would have to believe that anyone who attacked Iran thus pushing the date of their nuclear breakout anywhere from two to ten years into the future would be completely unable of attacking again when it appeared that Iran had once again come close to completion of weapons capability. Granted, such a resolution is far from perfect and would eventually fail to prevent Iran from building a nuclear arsenal, but doing nothing guarantees such an arsenal much sooner. The point these people seem to make beyond the inconclusive result is that attacking Iran would upset the cold calm and resultant low level of violence in the Middle East and might very well cause a major conflict to break out. When one considers the assets available to Iran to strike back without even using their own military forces by supplying and unleashing their terror proxies around the world, the prospect is indeed unnerving. Most who study the Middle East and Iran in particular are aware that Hezballah is capable of striking anywhere on the globe. Hezballah very likely has more numbers and wider distribution of assets than does al-Qaeda and most are familiar with the reach of al-Qaeda. There is nowhere in the Middle East, Africa, Europe or the Americas that is beyond the reach of Hezballah. It has long been known, as noted in articles from CNN in 2002, NBC News in 2007 and The Heritage Foundation in 2010, that Hezballah has a training facility in South American area known as the tri-border region which borders on Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay.

There is something troubling about these frightening statements which claim severe and varied disasters, they never address the issue of what the situation will be should nothing be done and Iran develop and produce deliverable nuclear weapons in even relative small numbers, say two dozen or so. Where I am more than willing to admit that any strike upon the Iranian nuclear facilities, no matter how precise and restrained from causing collateral damages or casualties, will necessarily lead to some form of retaliation ranging from significant terrorist strikes on targets world-wide targeting mainly assets of Israel, Britain, and the United States to a full-fledged war with multiple countries allying with Iran targeting mostly Israel and the naval and military assets belonging to the United States and those assets from allies which are also in the area. Neither of these scenarios is desirable and no sane person would risk such a retaliatory offensive if other venues could be availed in order to gain the same end result of preventing nuclear arms being produced by Iran. This is why there has not been any military solution implemented thus far and the avenues utilized thus far have been political, economic, social and other soft-power methods. These methods have been being pursued for well over a decade if one counts all economic sanctions against the Iranian government as the United States has had sanctions in place since the 1979 revolution which overthrew the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Despite ever growing restrictions on trade, the sanctions, both United Nations approved and independent sanctions by the United States and many European countries have proven insufficient to force the Iranian leadership to defer to demands and halt their enrichment of Uranium. Where Israel desires a definitive “Red Line” be drawn which, if crossed, would trigger the use of military force to halt Iranian progress with their nuclear programs, President Obama has refused and publically rebuked Israel over this demand. Meanwhile the nations of the European Union have applied even stricter sanctions than those of the United States which is, as is President Obama’s foreign policy is on most situations, leading from behind and has yet to ratchet up sanction to match the Europeans. Meanwhile President Obama and the State Department have issued waivers from having to apply sanctions on Iran to China, India, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom as they are dependent upon Iranian oil for their petroleum needs and other items which were also considered. Sometimes one might wonder if the sanctions are designed to fail or to simply be an annoyance but not the necessarily strangling of the Iranian economy which is necessitated if they are to be successful. One further point is North Korea and the sanctions which were placed upon them to prevent their attaining nuclear weapons capabilities and the fact that those sanctions which relegated some North Korean citizens to be near starvation, the sanctions proved insufficient in stopping their nuclear progress. Does anybody really and honestly expect Iran would be any less dedicated to their goal? So, if we note that the sanctions on Iran have as many holes in them as a colander, that sanctions have never in history prevented a determined nation from attaining nuclear weapons capability, and that it is apparent that neither President Obama, any of the European nations, Russia, China nor anybody else other than the remote possibility of Israel attacking the Iranian nuclear sites, then we had best begin to draw the picture of a world in which Iran has nuclear weapons and soon thereafter Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and possibly other regional nations would join those nations with nuclear weapons.

In such a world and considering the volatility of the Middle East, how long could we expect that nuclear weapons might be deployed in a first strike capability and not simply kept as a deterrent such as existed during the Cold War? My optimistic prediction would be a decade at the very longest before somebody or group of nations would resort to deploying their nuclear weapons in an effort to destroy Israel or possible one of their neighboring rival states. What is more likely would be the use of a single nuclear weapon by a terrorist entity who would deliver it aboard a ship or plane very likely in a large western city or capital. The possible targets for a nuclear weapon aboard a personal craft, be it an ocean going vessel or a private jet, would be any major city with a port facility or an international or similarly large airport. Offhand that does not leave out any cities in the Western and industrial world. The only defense against such an attack would have to depend on having sufficient intelligence beforehand and preventing the craft from ever leaving its home port or, if it is a ship, intercepting it in international waters before it could approach the shore, and a plane would need to be shot down as once it was airborne there is no way to board the plane, only shooting it down would prevent the plane being used as a suicide bombing. Whatever the threat that we are now considering with just Iran having the possibility of becoming a nuclear power would be multiple times worse as the number of other nations decided that if Iran could have nuclear weapons and not suffer the wrath of the Western powers, then they too are going to also develop nuclear weapons. Then we would very likely be facing a whole new world equation as numerous developing nations, say the majority of the countries making up the one-hundred-twenty non-Aligned Countries in NAM, all having nuclear arsenals and scores to settle. Imagine if every instance in the world where there are currently terror strikes or an active war being fought and now place nuclear weapons at the disposal of those perpetrating the violence or those who respond to attacks also having a nuclear option with which they could forever be rid of an ancient enemy. Picture a military coup where some military leader decides to use their country’s nuclear weapons in order to remove the current government and they simply plan to move the capital city to a less radioactive city after the coup. A world where it might be possible that within fifty years there are over a hundred, maybe even approaching two-hundred nuclear armed nations and the future will not be one of security, it will be a ticking time-bomb. Imagine all the world leaders at the United Nations and they are all playing a game of bridge with their neighboring nation and one of them has a small nuclear device and we get to watch and see which table disappears in a mushroom cloud, and then which one will be next. All it would take is one country or madman to use the first nuclear weapon and after that, who knows. I really would not wish to find out, but it is likely I will not get my wish.

Beyond the Cusp