The Israeli Iran and Obama Dilemma

 

What do you do when you presumed ally’s leader appears to have joined the other side? This is only the tip of the iceberg that Israel and her elected Prime Minister will be facing when the new government is formed sometime this month, possibly towards the end of the month as the forming of a coalition often takes the threat of an impending deadline to alter demands into something more tenable. The Framework Agreement has not made the dilemma any simpler as it appears that every party to the negotiations walked away with a completely different piece of paper or each translation took great amounts of liberty with definitions of the terms. Whatever the actual cause, the statements coming out of Washington D.C. and out of Tehran, Iran appear to be diametric opposites. The classic example is the claim by the Administration in Washington D.C. that the Iranians will be limited to using their slowest, least productive and most problematic centrifuges while the Iranians have had numerous military, civilian and IRGC (Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps) commanders relate that at the date the agreement is signed they will be able to fully implement the use of their advanced IR-8 centrifuges which are twenty-times as productive and reliable as compared to their earliest models. Such gaps in interpretations of the Framework Agreement does not bode well for reaching any desired result in a final agreement with both sides permitted their own so very liberal translations and definition of the terminology. These disparate readings of the Framework Agreement should signal to Secretary of State Kerry and the negotiating team that their attempts to make the wording inconclusive in its desired definitions which has apparently led to such a different take on the Framework Agreement which is probably best served reading the French and European Union versions which are so opaque and generalized using terminology which was technically meaningless leaving the entire document a singular masterpiece in diplospeak doubletalk worthy of a George Orwell novel.

 

The definitions and interpretations are even less worrisome for the Israelis as they probably have yet to receive a copy of the Framework in any language. The one saving grace is that the Israelis do not need to research the Framework and what might be concluded from the disparate interpretations; they need only consider whatever the Iranians believe is the intent. As much as President Obama has raked the United States relationship with Israel over hot coals and through a harvester shredder, the United States President does not pose any threat or difficulty by having a unique definition of the terms in the Framework while whatever the Iranians discern from the document is potentially a direct threat to Israel and her survival. Yes, it is true that the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was chanting “Death to America” right along with the throngs chanting and cheering right along with their leader, the same man also this past weekend called for the destruction of Israel referring to Israel as that “barbaric” Jewish State which “has no cure but to be annihilated.” The Iranian Supreme Leader went on to present a strategy titled “Nine key questions about the elimination of Israel” which was also placed on his Twitter account Saturday night where he used the hashtag of #handsoffalaqsa, an oblique reference to the continuing terrorist riots and other tensions on the Temple Mount especially in reference to the right for Jews and other non-Muslims to pray on the holy site to three religions. The Ayatollah’s plans laid out a political path to replacing Israel completely with an Islamic run state where the Jews and other non-Muslims would necessarily be forced to accept Dhimmitude and a life of constant disgrace and the downtrodden shame as second class citizens living at the grace and good tidings of their Muslim masters. What he left out and even went so far as to claim his plan did not include was the death of the Jews living in the area once the Muslims were granted rule as at any point the Muslim rulers could give the Jews the choice of paying the Jiyza special tax or converting to Islam and eventually at their whim change that choice replacing the Jiyza tax making the new choice between conversion to Islam or death. Should any Jew choose to convert, if any Muslim believed that the Jew was not a true and faithful believer in Islam, they could bring charges which would inevitable result in the death penalty for apostasy. That is the truth behind the nine point plan by the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

 

But there is another bothersome problem which has raised it head some claim as many as four different times. Israel, as an ally, so as not to interfere with or be mistaken for a hostile force, will present any military plans to the United States Pentagon who shares these plans with the White House. Off the top I recall once when it was understood that the Israelis would be granted overflight permission which would include potentially refueling of F-15 and F-16 Fighter-Bombers over Saudi Arabian territories potentially just before launching a raid into Iran and potentially repeating such a refueling on their return flight. This was a quiet, under the radar, under even the kitchen table as this was obviously a super sensitive and secret permission being extended by the Saudis. Any revelation of such permission of such a sensitive and volatile agreement would immediately cause massive denials from both sides and the agreement would crash and burn. Not all that surprising but that was exactly what occurred at some point before said raid was launched when somehow the news of this agreement between Saudi Arabian rulers and Israel leaked to the press with in the aftermath it becoming obvious that the leak originated not with the Pentagon but with either the White House or the State Department, which it actually was is irrelevant as the real source of the leak was much closer if not actually to the top man in the White House. Months upon months later there was an arrangement for Israel to lease a pair of derelict unused military airfields in Azerbaijan which both lay a short distance north of Iran. The agreement might have been for these airbases to solely be used in cases of emergency such as a damaged or short on fuel fighter jet needed a landing point for repair or refueling as they would otherwise not be capable of making the entire return trip to Israel from their mission over Iran. Once again there was a leak that Azerbaijan was working with and assisting the Israelis on a potential attack on the Iranian nuclear sites. Needless to say but the complete rejection of there being such a plan was claimed and sworn to by both sides. Again the leak was traced back to the White House. Obviously Israel has a problem informing the United States about any plans to address the Iranian nuclear program in a manner separate from the Framework or any negotiated agreement but rather a more direct approach.

 

There is another problem with the United States when it would come for Israel to launch an assault on the Iranian nuclear sites or any other targets which might be included in such a scenario, and that is the fact that there are probably always two aircraft carriers and the airbase at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and within range of any Israeli attack route on Iran. These United States assets matter because it has also been rumored that the United States forces in the region have orders to intercept the Israelis and force them to return to their bases in Israel or face being shot out of the air. The actual leaked information stated that the United States pilots were to make it as difficult as possible but not to shoot at the Israeli aircraft first but to sweep them from the skies as soon as one fired at a United States aircraft or ship. These intercepts were to be taken over Iraqi airspace which is technically under United States security until the Iraqi Air Force is competent enough to do the job themselves. Needless to point out that the most direct route for Israeli aircraft would take them over Jordanian airspace followed by Iraq airspace and in reverse order upon their return to Israel. A further problem might exist within the Israeli political and military command and personnel where there are those who firmly believe that nothing Israeli has plans to do should be attempted until they receive affirmation of their plans by the United States. In many cases that person is also a member of the Prime Minister’s inner security Cabinet. One such was Defense Minister Ehud Barak who was feeding intelligence and all plans in detail directly to the White House and quite possibly directly to President Obama. Odds are this was done with the knowledge of Prime Minister Netanyahu and it is possible or even likely that it was Bibi Netanyahu who has ordered the exchange of information, especially on plans for attacks on the Iranian nuclear sites.

 

This leads to the current Israeli dilemma on what path to take and whether any or every plan should be shared with Israeli allies. Israeli leadership does need to take under consideration the obvious fact that President Obama has an apparent amorous desire to complete a deal with Iran and nurture said plan while building up the Iranian power granting them recognition and respect while protecting the Iranians from threats of a military address to destroy their nuclear program by preventing that option from being taken off the table and put into practice. It appears that President Obama and his closest advisors not only seek to empower Iran granting them hegemonic powers throughout the Middle East and even into South East Asia, Northern Africa and Eastern Europe, surpassing Israeli powers in similar areas, and completing this shakeup and restructuring of the Middle East, the President seems set on pressing Israel to take steps President Obama sees as the solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict even if those steps end up being performed unilaterally and result in Hamas or ISIS taking control over Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and causing a direct threat to the Israeli heartlands where close to three-quarters of her citizens reside and an even higher percentage of her infrastructure, industry, manufacturing, commercial and service industries exist. Pulling back to the borders envisioned by President Obama would return Israel to the borders which would permit any attack on Israel from Judea and Samaria to cut Israel completely in half isolating the Galilee from the Negev and destroying and occupying a quarter of Israel simply by advancing the approximately the diameter of the Washington D.C. Capital Beltway which is just a smidge over nine miles. That is the width of the central neck of Israel should she be forced back to the Green Line, the pre-June 1967 Six Day War. As modern artillery is capable of firing well beyond ten miles with great effect and accuracy, simply mounting artillery batteries almost anywhere in western Judea and the Arab forces could systematically destroy all of central Israel within a single twenty-four hour period. Israel would not need fear an attack by missiles from Iran when artillery from Iran would do just as well if not better and cost far less. This would be the biggest gift President Obama could grant Iran, even better than the ambiguous Framework and the agreement to follow. This was why it was assumed even in the United Nations that Israel would be allowed to retain the lands of Judea and Samaria and any refugees would be settled within the country where they were located and considered an even treatment as Israel absorbed many hundreds of thousands refugees from Middle Eastern and North African Arab and Muslim states by 1960 as these were Jews chased from their homes and towns where they had resided often for over fifteen-hundred-years, some even over two-thousand-years.

 

All those who have been claiming that all Israel has to worry about is surviving the remainder of President Obama’s term in the White House, this is far from true. Israel is facing so numerous threats of annihilation and from so many directions that it is almost impossible to get one’s arms around it. Even Egypt and Jordan, two nations which have made their peace with Israel and now reside with frosty borders and relations, have at least kept those borders peaceful. There are even those occasions where Israel will take steps to aid Jordan and Egypt and they, mostly Egypt, have been known to take measures which assist Israeli survival. The greatest example of such cooperation has been the enforcement by the Egyptians of their own embargo and strict rules enforced for passage through the Rafah Gate into the Sinai Peninsula from Gaza. This is not done by Egypt completely out of friendship as much as it is due to the assistance that Hamas provides the terrorist groups located in the Sinai Peninsula who attacks Egyptian soldiers, border guards, and even attack Egyptian resorts located in the Sinai Peninsula along the coast of the Red Sea. The truth is Iran is also a threat to Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and all of the other Arab Sunni nations with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and so on. Currently the Iranian threat and control has spread to some very challenging areas where they threaten far more than Israel. Iran is openly supplying arms and also IRGC soldiers to Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad along with Hezballah terrorist forces from Lebanon allowing al-Assad to survive against ISIS and the other rebel groups. Iran has great influence over the Shia majority in Iraq and is assisting the fighting again ISIS in Iraq. This is not entirely altruistic as it is a definitive possibility, some might say inevitability, that ISIS has plans for engaging Iran directly at some point once it gets control over Iraq.

 

Furthermore, Iranian backed Houthis are moving directly across Yemen and have already swept the United States backed government from the capital and disbanded replacing themselves as the rulers of Yemen. Yemen is doubly important as it furthers the Iranian encirclement of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Their reaching the southwest corner of Yemen gives Iran control of the Bab el Mandeb Strait (Arabic: باب المندب‎) which translates as “Gateway of Anguish”, or “Gateway of Tears” and is important because it connects through its narrow waterway the exit from the Red Sea, which includes all shipments from the Israeli port of Eilat and the Jordanian port of al-Aqabah and ships passing southward through the Suez Canal, into the Gulf of Aden and on to the Arabian Sea and the east coast of Africa or on to the Indian Ocean and all of Asia. This would be an additional maritime choke point which matches well with their ability to shut down the Straits of Hormuz which is the choke point for the Persian Gulf through to the Gulf of Oman and on to the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean with passing through the straits what is claimed to be at least one-third of the world’s oil. Should Iran ever close both of these points then international trade would be greatly hampered and Europe would basically have to take the old route around the Cape of Good Hope or across the Atlantic Ocean and through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific Ocean which would be longer but some might believe it provides safer waterways. Still, closing these two passages would still bring much of maritime trade to a screeching halt while greatly increasing shipping times and place a burden on retail outlets to raise their prices on many if not all imported goods.

 

Finally, the biggest threat of an nuclear armed Iran is the threats posed to Israel and other nations of a nuclear armed Saudi Arabia, a nuclear armed Egypt with the potential to have the Muslim Brotherhood return to power, a nuclear armed Turkey, Syria, Hezballah, al-Qaeda, nuclear armed UAE, Kuwait, Iraq and who knows who else as terror elements gain access to nuclear weapons supplied by their state sponsors such as Iran or Saudi Arabia. The spread of nuclear armed states spreading throughout the Muslim world might inspire and motivate other nations to begin their own nuclear armed program and they might receive assistance from other new nuclear powers. The fact is that a nuclear armed Iran would forever alter the balances of power everywhere. We very well might need to adjust to a world without any restraints on who can have nuclear weapons and it simply becomes anybody with the cash to finance their breakout point making it realistic for every nation who really desires such weapons. Of course if your neighbor decides to join the nations with nuclear weapons stockpiles and then another neighbor announced their advanced program and claims to have developed thermo-nuclear devices, hydrogen bombs, and has produced a number of those in their stockpile, how long before the nation, now surrounded by nuclear armed neighbors, makes the only logical decision they can for their future survival they begin their own nuclear weapons research and development. As we pointed out in our April 7, 2015, article titled Historic Lessons and Future Nuclear War where we traced some of the super weapons through the ages as man developed from clubs to thermonuclear devices which can level whole cities or destroy only the electronic infrastructure bring a nation to its knees, we realized that there has never been the development of a super weapon which was not used, sometimes these weapons made such a difference that it decided which trail the human genome traveled from that one crucial super weapon for that warfare. We also found that often the super weapon from the last war is the standard for weapons used in the next war and thus one can only deduce that there will be a future war where some form of nuclear weapon will be used on the battlefield which may easily lead to an exchange of nuclear weapons which might be misinterpreted as a launch and use their nuclear weapons against their enemies while they are still able and the spread continues from this one episode to a conflagration which would be immeasurable. All this might be the eventuality after Iran becomes a nuclear armed state and it spreads through the Arab and Muslim worlds and from there beyond spanning the globe. Perhaps holding such power under one’s control will temper their arrogances and put their pride and conceits in perspective and nation shall choose to no longer lift their sword against their neighbor as war might then draw too large a cost to even be imagined. But what about the terrorist entities of which there are a number who are supplied by Iran which include Hezballah and Hamas, both of which border Israel and have started conflicts using every weapon they could muster. What will be the result if these entities are given access to nuclear weapons which they could then use against Israeli cities? Additionally, Iran has been attempting to gain favor and supply Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority which occupy Judea, Samaria and have access to all of Jerusalem and control the Temple Mount through the use of civil disturbances and rioting. Should Fatah receive a nuclear device it would not be impossible to place it in a vehicle, likely a stolen vehicle from within Israel and sporting Israeli citizen plates granting it free travel with relative ease. Such a situation could result in such a device being set to detonate right outside the Knesset Parliament Building and possibly even timed to coincide with a second device being set-off in central Tel Aviv. Such an attack would leave Israeli little choice but to strike back and to do so with the ferocity of a wounded mother protecting her children as that would be exactly what Israel would be engaged in, protecting those Children of Israel who had survived despite having much of her heart torn from within her. Never Again also meant that we would never allow the Masada ending to be played out again and no longer would Israel sit still to be carved-up by her neighbors, Never Again!

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

This Will Likely be the Final Extension With Iran

 

The last set of negotiation between the P5+1 (United States, Britain, China, Russia, France and Germany) with Iran ended on Monday without them reaching any agreement and the setting of another deadline for seven months hence. That deadline is meaningless as was very probably the past deadline which just expired as Iran has been holding joint developmental programs on their rocket and missile technology as well as nuclear weapons technology over the last two decades. The bad news is there will probably not be any meaningful future negotiations as before the seven month deadline is reached the Iranians will not only have established a nuclear weapons program but have already produced a number of weapons making them a bonafide nuclear weapons power and quite possibly capable and producing miniature warheads just as has become acknowledged fact for the North Koreans. This will allow the Iranians to mount their nuclear weaponry atop their ballistic missiles which already are capable of reaching much of Europe and most of the United States if permitted to stage their nuclear missiles in Venezuela, Nicaragua or Cuba, the first two of which have already signed agreements with Iran permitting their doing exactly that staging. Even more frightening is that Iran has practiced and proven to have the ability to launch ballistic missiles with close to a two-thousand mile range from onboard merchant ships similar to the North Korean flagged ship which was found to contain just such a missile while traversing the Panama Canal. Where once it becomes known that the Iranians have developed and been producing nuclear warheads there will be many who will rush to accuse President Obama and his administration of falling down on the job and failing utterly in preventing the Iranians from reaching breakout point and actually begin producing nuclear weapons., the reality is that there is more than sufficient blame to go around as these negotiations have been progressing for almost twenty years and none of the American Presidents showed any capability at understanding the facts that they all had been played by the Iranians from the very beginning.

 

Blame is not going to be of any help and will be a simple waste of time and energy. The problem facing the world now is that since the clock cannot be wound back and the ability of Iran to produce deployable nuclear warheads be undone, then steps need to be taken to assure that the ability of Iran for utilizing those warheads is diminished to the point of being made negligible before the Middle East is launched into a nuclear arms race with every nation racing their neighbors trying to maintain sufficient weapons which will presumably attain some strange balance and a very tricky MADD system where Shiite and Sunni nations balance against each other and even intra-Shiite and intra-Sunni nations also balance with each one claiming to have developed sufficient deterrence against all the other new nuclear weapons powers. It can be assumed that Saudi Arabia will receive not only nuclear technology and designs from Pakistan but also an initial set of nuclear warheads potentially already atop ballistic missiles as a repayment for their bankrolling the Pakistani nuclear program after India detonated their first nuclear warhead. Turkey and Egypt likely have sufficient technological expertise to develop their own rudimentary nuclear weapons program with it being simply a matter of time before they also join the nuclear weapons club. Then there are the rest of the oil rich nations who would be capable of investing sufficient funding to attain nuclear weapons technology and build their own arsenals. Then there is the further complication that many of these nations also have ties with nations and terrorist groups who all would be pressuring to be granted a nuclear device with which to resolve some problem or to use to threaten a neighbor such as Syria might want to threaten Turkey or the Sudan might desire a warhead with which to destroy South Sudan and take back any or all of the oilfields which they lost control over. Then there might be desires to threaten Europe or Israel or the Chechens might want to strike Russia and claim innocence as they were not known to have any nuclear devices or the Uyghurs might desire to strike China in much the same manner. Then there is the small matter of Israel and take your pick of who might desire to strike Israel with a nuclear device, especially if they thought they could deflect suspicions onto somebody else. Then there is the idea that Iran has often made known where they desire a world without America or Zionism and as their chant is most often, “Death to America, Death to Israel.” And the small fact that they refer to the United States as the great Satan and Israel as the little Satan, it is obvious that Iran desires to strike the United States as much if not more so that they do Israel. The Iranians also must realize that they would have an easier time striking Israel if the United States had been delivered a decapitating attack first.

 

The only thing more complicated than getting a straight answer from anybody in the Obama White House as to how they were unable to prevent the Iranians from developing and being ready and able to deploy nuclear warheads would be to be able to figure out the resulting rush and development of nuclear weapons and building of arsenals across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) while also predicting whose weapon would be the first actually delivered, at whom it would be targeted, and through which proxy might that strike take place utilizing. The easy prediction is that within eighteen months of Iran testing or declaring their possession of a nuclear device that Saudi Arabia will also be well armed with multiple warheads and it may even take less than a few weeks before they had received their initial shipment of warheads from Pakistan unless Iran is capable of preventing such a transfer from Sunni Pakistan to Sunni Saudi Arabia and the cash cow that Pakistan owes a great debt to Saudi Arabia for underwriting the Pakistani drive to nuclear capabilities and the purchasing of the tools required for the production of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal. The other problem is that once the cat is out of the bag and the Middle East enters into an arms race, the long-standing idea of nuclear nonproliferation will be fatally struck through its heart and die so quickly that there will be insufficient time for the United Nations to call for an emergency meeting, or even for the United Nations to blame Israel, and that is fast. Then there is the one other constant we can expect, and that is when the United Nations does call its meeting to place the blame for the arms race that murdered the nonproliferation treaty, the entire blame will initially be placed on Israel, and after any further investigations are complete, Israel and then the United States will be blamed with the tie breaker going to Israel simply because Prime Minister Netanyahu has been the leader in demanding that force would be required and required earlier rather than later to prevent the Iranians reaching nuclear breakout and actually producing an arsenal. The only question which will not be answered by the end of the next deadline in seven months will be if Iran will have developed, and admitted to having done so, a nuclear weapon. There should be no question that Iran will have attained nuclear breakout and already started to stock a nuclear weapons arsenal before the next deadline and something they have probably been busy building during the time they have been negotiating for the past year or longer. But do not expect anybody from the negotiations let out the truth as the Iranians know they benefit by extending the negotiations for as long as they are able while packing away nuclear warheads and developing intercontinental ballistic missiles and increasing their accuracy and President Obama has placed his legacy on reaching an agreement so that he can claim that he reached the agreement which brought us peace in our times. Let us all hope that peace in our time has far less drastic results as the last time a world leaders exclaimed those words on his return to Britain from Munich. This time the declaration will be made after deplaning from Geneva or Vienna rather than Munich, but does that difference really make a difference? Probably not one iota.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Northeastern Saudi and Eastern Gulf Oil Fields the New Sudetenland

Once Iran has successfully attained their nuclear weapons credentials the world will begin to see their long-term plans. The presumption that first thing Iran will do once they have a deliverable nuclear weapon is attack Israel is highly doubtful. One reason is that the leadership uses the Israel issue to explain away any difficulties experienced by their society by claiming that it is a result of evil perpetrated by the Zionists. The Iranian threats against America are equally simply propaganda they feed the people to give them an external target.  Iran also knows that if they should attack either Israel or the United States that the price they would pay would be beyond anything their society could survive. Even if an Iranian attack on Israel was completely successful it would not prevent a return strike even if that strike had to originate from Israeli submarines weeks later or even months later, that strike would still decimate Iran. Any retaliation from the United States after an Iranian attack, well, I doubt there needs to be any comment on the ferocity with which the United States would respond if they were hit in numerous locations by an Iranian nuclear first strike. So, that leaves the question that if Iran is not developing a nuclear threat capability for Israel or the United States, then why go through all the sanctions and other difficulties as well as the expense of the program itself.

 

Iran is not seeking a nuclear arsenal with which to dominate the world, at least not initially, and they are not seeking to destroy the United States or Israel, but they do want to make anybody who might intervene on the real Iranian plans to have the doubt of attacking a nuclear armed nation to consider before they move to control the Middle East and its oil reserves. The first target the Iranians would most likely make some inroads upon would be the nations along the eastern rim of the Saudi Peninsula, especially those with sizeable Shiite populations. Those would include Bahrain with a population that is 70% Shiite, Kuwait with a population that is 25% Shiite, United Arab Emirates with a population approaching 20% Shiite and lastly the northeastern oil fields of Saudi Arabia where the majority of Saudi Shiites reside and where they are a clear majority. There could potentially be calls from the Shiite populations within these areas for their repatriation with Shiite Iran much the same as was done by the Sudetenland and their repatriation into Nazi Germany after the signing of the Munich Agreement of 1938 by which France and Britain sacrificed northern Czechoslovakia to placate Hitler and presumably forgo any possibility of a war. The same eventuality will result if the Western allies turn their backs on Saudi Arabia and the other nations which might come under threat from Iran and allow these lands to be sacrificed giving in to Iran simply to avoid testing a nuclear power and presumably avoid a very horrid war. The result would be that by handing Iran control over the vast majority of the Middle East oil reserves would result in energy blackmail being the new Iranian economic weapon through which they would seek hegemony over an ever increasing area of the world. Eventually their appetite would become obviously insatiable and the continued surrendering to their demand unsustainable thus eventually leading to war but where the Iranians would possesses a far greater ability and strength due to the weakness shown by mostly the Western powers who were doing whatever they could to avoid that very same war when it was easily winnable. This result is only achievable in a case where the United States is in an isolationist mode or a period of weakness where the President has taken a position of avoiding any foreign entanglements and has defaulted on the United States presumed responsibility to act as the leader of the free world. What it would take is an American President who would solely lead from behind and allow others to take the initiative while the United States sat on the sidelines and watched.

 

This exact scenario would explain why the Iranians were willing to suffer the sanctions no matter the difficulties even to an extreme level simply in order to complete their nuclear weapons program before the United States changed its people in the leadership of the country. The reason they were able to come and negotiate the recent agreement were twofold, first they knew that with the reelection of President Obama they had another four years of an American military superpower in remission and unlikely to interfere with any Iranian plans and secondly they also knew that President Obama wanted an agreement which would allow him to concentrate fully on his Administration’s primary areas of concern, the fundamental transformation of the United States into just another overstretched, overtaxed, over-indebted socialist nation which is undistinguishable from any nation in the European Union. The final steps are in the works with the soon to be offered solution to the failure that is Obamacare, a single payer government healthcare system along with the other final touches which include a higher than reasonable minimum wage (also called a living wage), guaranteed minimum salary even for those who are unemployed through permanent unemployment insurance and other social safety nets, a scaled down military which is understaffed, undertrained, and underfunded making it unable to do more than patrol the waters and skies domestically and have virtually zero projection of force capabilities. Iran has seen what the United States is transforming into and they are counting of just this transformation to allow them to step up in the not so distant future and become a world power equal or better equipped than the United States and with more energy reserves after annexing the Saudi Arabian oilfields and with only China as a foreseeable equal. Iran will first try to become the superpower of the Muslim World, then of the Middle East and North Africa, then of everything west of China and eventually vying for hegemony of the Americas. This sounds preposterous but probably so did a nuclear powered North Korea and next a nuclear armed Iran, who or what next is anybody’s guess. Should Saudi Arabia be allocated a nuclear deterrent by Pakistan, as is their informal agreement under which the Saudis financed the Pakistani nuclear weapons program after India tested their initial nuclear weapon, then the entire shooting match between Iran and Saudi Arabia could become the stage for a truly frightening game of brinkmanship with both sides trying to make the other blink, and then hold on to your hats. That has the potential of turning very ugly very fast and the repercussions are as unpredictable as they can get. Perhaps bowing to Iran as was the case in the recent Geneva agreement was the fateful rolling of the dice and one is still spinning while the other came up a one, a second one means snake-eyes, everybody loses.

 

Beyond the Cusp