They Threaten Israel and Speak Falsely and Iran Just Smiles

 

Hezballah Leader Hassan Nasrallah continues to make empty boasts and threats he knows would bring devastation on Lebanon and specifically Hezballah if he were to act upon his words. The claim he makes is similarly made by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah and all of Israel’s enemies. Their claim is, as Hassan Nasrallah boasted, that should Israel make an assault on Lebanon that Hezballah in response, in his words, “We will destroy your tanks, kill your soldiers and defeat your army.” Hassan Nasrallah can make this threat for one simple reason, he knows that without a provocation or imminent threat from Hezballah that Israel will not attack them in Lebanon or even in Syria where most of Hezballah is engaged in a futile cause against less threatening forces than the IDF could bring to a war with Hezballah. Of course threatening Israel is one thing every foreign power can do with impunity knowing that the possibility of an Israeli strike on their forces are as remote as it would be to have fish fall upon the Hezballah training facilities in the Bekaa Valley out of the sky on an otherwise perfectly sunny day along the Lebanon-Syrian border. We hear these boasts mostly from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and twice a year from Hezballah. Their boastings are made for the morale of their supporters and their fighters such that Israel not taking the bait and attacking to prove the IDFs prowess and make a liar out of Hassan Nasrallah in turn makes his boasts taken to be true and thus Israel is viewed as being weak. Of course Hassan Nasrallah means nothing by these protestations and would be terrified if Israel were to take such boasting to heart and thus be led to make an assault to prove his boasting to be dead wrong. This boast was timed to coincide with the two year commemoration of the second Lebanon War, not exactly the most stellar performance by the IDF but was sufficient for Hassan Nasrallah to state in an interview something along the gist of had he realized the scope of the Israeli response to the kidnapping of two IDF soldiers, he would never have approved the raid. One of his statements can only be valid and I am more prepared to believe his gut reaction immediately after invoking Israeli retribution for an attack than his boasts made knowing that Israel will never attack solely over words and as no rockets are flying over the border, no IDF or Israeli civilians have been kidnapped, his boast is as safe as any statement alone could be.

 

 

Hassan Nasrallah Gesturing during remote feed video onto large screen during Hezballah semi-annual pretense of readiness to defeat any Israeli assault as he remain in hiding presumably beyond the reach of Israeli drones and commandos. This enhances his appearance of constantly under threat by Israeli forces seeking to assassinate him. The likely truth is that Israel had no reason, desire or even bothered to draw up plans to do so. As far as whether Israel could find Hassan Nasrallah’s various secreted locations, probably already have them pinpointed on some map just in case it becomes advantageous to remove Nasrallah from his position as the figurehead of Hezballah.

 

 

On the other side, why would Hassan Nasrallah make such a provocative remark when his forces are locked into a losing battle against al-Qaeda and the Islamic State and the line that Hezballah must protect gets longer mile by mile as Bashir al-Assad and whatever remnants of the Syrian army that was not Druze, who had retreated to their own home areas to protect their own families, leaving the Alawites and Bashir al-Assad to defend themselves. Perhaps it is a rallying cry screamed into a deep void which is ever widening leaving Hezballah, and by fact of locations, the Bekaa Valley and anywhere else that ISIS or al-Qaeda might seek to finish what Hassan Nasrallah started when he first engaged the forces in Syria fighting to dethrone Bashir al-Assad, to make this struggle a true Sunni vs. Shiite affair. Now that the Alawites are being squeezed into an ever collapsing area along the coast slowly inching their retreat towards the point which will require Russian Naval forces to intervene, this will make the town of Latakia, where the Russian Mediterranean Fleet docks, secure and providing a last bastion for the Alawites and al-Assad. If I were an Alawite I might be tempted at this point to make a deal where al-Assad and his leading cohorts be turned over half to each al-Qaeda and ISIS forces with the winner of a coin toss to get Bashir himself in exchange for being left the strip of land they currently hold. Of course they would also have to make the port facilities available to the governing bodies replacing al-Assad once the rest of the fighting ends, if it ever does.

 

That brings us into the entire debacle unfolding in Syria and the different scenarios which are potentially about to develop. The current Turkish bombing campaign, presumably to prevent any further spread by the Islamic State forces, has had a strange set of targets as they all appear to be areas where the Kurdish fighters have been holding off Islamic State or ISIS, whichever name anybody prefers in this theater. These areas are not under Islamic State control nor Shiite or al-Qaeda but Kurdish Controlled who has been one of the most stalwart allies of the United States anti-ISIS efforts. The Kurds are viewed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as his most hated foes and considered as much an ally as the PKK and Turkey’s Kurdish Party who currently are blocking Erdogan and his party from all but turning Turkey into an Islamic state. Erdogan hopes to inaugurate himself as its once elected permanent leader and finishing the complete eradication of the vision of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk who ruled Turkey after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

 

 

Photograph of a night time flight takeoff on reconnaissance mission from Incirlik Air Base inside Turkey. United States and Turkey are soon to start joint bombing and ground support missions against Islamic State forces to prevent their further advances in Syria. Thus far many of the Turkish sorties appeared to strike Kurdish positions rather than ISIS or al-Qaeda positions according to reports. Some believe this to be a move by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to paint Kurds as enemies of Turkey as he plans on holding new elections declaring previous elections unable to form ruling coalition.

 

 

Meanwhile, the United States cannot be faulted for attempting to enlist the aid of Turkey against ISIS and by doing so allow the United States to finally fly strikes out from the Incirlik Air Base in the coming days making striking at ISIS forces and Islamic State secured regions that much more feasible and less taxing on American assets with the addition of the air base. There have already been a few reconnaissance announced to have been flown from the NATO Incirlik Air Base in central Turkey and talks are continuing to set guidelines for the use of the base. Actual sorties should start over the weekend or early next week while the reconnaissance flights will obviously continue as well from Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. These attacks may work to the advantage for Hezballah and Bashir al-Assad by forcing their opponent to recede allowing al-Assad room to reconstitute his forces. As long as al-Assad and Hezballah can hold on to the International Airport in Damascus for another five weeks then Iran will likely have a large inflow of funds allowing for availing al-Assad with fresh supplies and potentially additional IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) units sufficient to alter the balance of powers. Allowing for al-Assad to reestablish his hold on the eastern areas in Syria and then hold those lands and allow the airstrikes by the United States and Turkey to do their damage and weaken their opponents could inadvertently make the retaking of Syria easier for by Bashir al-Assad. Further, by assisting in defeat of Islamic State with United States air support providing whatever support the Iranian military might require, Iran could finally reestablish their puppet states in Iraq and Syria thus retaining the Shiite Crescent across the Middle East as revealed in the map below.

 

This will be the starting point which will be gifted to Iran by the United States along with the P5+1 placing Iran as the hegemonic power and new nuclear power potentially breaking out unannounced and finally leaving the NPT (Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons) and after six months announcing their building of nuclear warheads and having developed ICBMs capable of striking anywhere throughout the world. The question soon after President Obama leaves office will be what can be done now that it may be too late to reel in Iran as with the unification of the Crescent under their singular rule with puppet governments in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, the question becomes where does the world place the line which must not be crossed. Will that line be Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Greece, Romania, where? The threat right now appears to be the Islamic State as their atrocities have grabbed the attention of many and will eventually lead to the turning to the one country currently perched to best threaten and destroy the Islamic State, Iran. The question that will likely never be asked is whether we are making an even worse and more dangerous problem reinforcing Iran and giving them such a huge swath of land as depicted below, and that is a conservative estimate as by the time the next United States President is sworn in Iran might already have swallowed Jordan and joined forces with the Arab Palestinians currently in Judea and Samaria as well as having crossed into the Arabian Peninsula and grabbed all of Kuwait and the Saudi Arabian oil fields all in the name of liberating oppressed Shiites which will be encouraged to riot and cause disturbances such that Iran can come to their rescue, all with the blessing of the United States and Europe in the hopes that they will be eaten last. Perhaps by then there will be no place at which the line can be drawn as the dye will have been cast and the doom of nuclear war facing the world dead in the face, then what?

 

This is the desired and long sought Iranian Shiite Crescent across the Middle East reaching from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea after Islamic State Defeat and Iran Surge Retaking Syria for Bashir al-Assad with Hezballah retaining their iron-fist control over Lebanon and the Iraqi Shiites retaining their hold on the southern half of Iraq. This could very well be the starting positions for a final World War resulting in exchanges of nuclear weapons before the end is reached. This map also depicts the areas bordering the Iranian influence which could become the future red lines and the trip wire for a horrific conflagration, exactly what the Twelvers desire to bring back the Twelfth Imam and the Islamic Messiah who will lead them to finally realize their destiny of world conquest. Despite what many in the West view as an outdated and dead idea, the Iranian leadership dreams of world conquest and desire to that end.

 

 

Once the Iranians can establish their desired and long sought Iranian Shiite Crescent across the Middle East reaching from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea after Islamic State Defeat and Iran Surge Retaking Syria for Bashir al-Assad with Hezballah retaining their iron-fist control over Lebanon with the Iraqi Shiites retaining their hold on the southern half of Iraq, this really is a case of then what. This could very well be the starting positions for a final World War resulting in exchanges of nuclear weapons before the end is reached. This map also depicts the areas bordering the Iranian influence which could become the future red lines and the trip wire for a horrific conflagration, exactly what the Twelvers desire to bring back the Twelfth Imam and the Islamic Messiah who will lead them to finally realize their destiny of world conquest. Despite what many in the West view as an outdated and dead idea, the Iranian leadership dreams of world conquest and desire to that end. Would the tripping point be Israel or perhaps Turkey who could demand NATO support under Chapter Five of the NATO Charter. Maybe Iran would take Kuwait and the oil fields of Saudi Arabia and that would trip the wire for Western intervention in response to the Saudi Royals. Perhaps a sweep from Yemen, we cannot forget the Iranian southern front, into Eretria, Somalia, Djibouti and then across the Sudan and into Egypt which could be yet another call for Western assists against Iran. The only thing we can be assured, the Crescent is the beginning, not the end of Iranian expansion.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Iran Deal Delivers Donations for Disaster in Death

 

The one-hundred-fifty-billion dollars of unfrozen funds which will near instantly over-fill the coffers beyond their capacity and even beyond Iran’s wildest imaginations. Oil and pistachio sales will assist in keeping those coffers healthy with a steady influx of monies. Proof of the extents to which this sudden wealth has provided Iran becomes obvious with the sales of arms made viable to Iran even before the ink dried on the papers. The set of sales, when taken at their entirety, reveals that Iran has just purchased the equivalence of an entire Air Force minus pilots. This set of deals comes replete with one-hundred tanker aerial refueling aircraft, one-hundred-fifty sophisticated air-combat jet fighters with Israeli avionics and finally the two-hundred-fifty highly-advanced heavy-fighter-bombers already set for delivery to Iran by Russia and China. Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Iran herself will suffer from the results of this deal. All the predictions of gloom and doom are purported to be in this deal come from the publically released deal. As horrific as the realities of the publically declared sections of this deal have proven to be as their ramifications are flushed out and deciphered may be, these predicted disasters are simply the results of the publically released Iran Nuclear Agreement 7/14/2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, yet there exists another wholly secreted away part of the Iranian deal made without Secretary of State Kerry’s knowledge or participation and has been secreted from review yet will be put into enforcement simply as a result of the signatures placed on the publically revealed deal. How many more disastrous consequences will come into review as our focus becomes fixated on the inferences, implications and machinations resultant on the secreted deal which for all we know will include as yet undetermined and yet to be decided terms left to be fulfilled as the needs arise and simply left to Iran or the IAEA to make future decisions independent of review. If we are to be honest, the reality is that we have absolutely no idea of exactly the deal made with Iran defines and what restrictions on inspections or implications which make even developing nuclear weapons immediately and while remaining a member of the NPT (Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons) as the secret deal might even permit Iran to have their determination altered and defined as a Recognized Nuclear Weapon State Acceders, with equal or potentially superior rights to China or France, within the framework of the NPT definitions pertaining to nuclear powers.

 

The reality is that the revealed and awful deal we and even the members of Congress, the Ambassadors of the nations in the Security Council of the United Nations, the other sitting members of the P5+1, and even the negotiating team from the United States including the Secretary of State, very likely the State Department and everybody other than the selected leadership of Iran and whoever was the negotiator of the secret treaty and a remote possibility President Obama actually know what is included in the super-secret deal made with Iran. Now for our little bit of conjecture; this editorialist, if forced to make a guess, suspects that United States Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, Presidential Security Advisor Susan Rice and Special Advisor to the President Valerie Jarrett whose assistance in such matters is unmeasurable as she was Iran born and speaks Farsi and thus may be the only people from the United States Administration of President Obama and only person outside of Iran and the top members of the IAEA, if even them, who knows what was included in what we suspect is a massive giveaway super-secret agreement with Iran which will remain concealed with portions becoming known as their results are felt. Beyond altering the standings of Iran pertaining to the NPT there is likely little which could have further reaching ramifications, but that prediction too is made while in complete ignorance of the actual terms which are hidden within this ancillary section of the treaty which the world is discussing despite the unknowns of the hidden agendas and stipulations. It is entirely possible that the secretive parts of the agreement actually nullify the publically released portions and that the only knowledge Secretary of State Kerry has about the treaty equals yours or mine. The briefing that Secretary Kerry received may have been simply telling him he would be better off not knowing and that he had no determined need and that for security reasons he was not to be trusted with such knowledge and Secretary Kerry would interpret that as being an in depth discussion of the secret treaty of which he knows little to nothing.

 

 

General Amano, IAEA Secretariat, Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, President Rouhani aka Smiling Cheshire Man, Lead Negotiator Zarif and Da Bomb from Dr Strangelove

 

 

In all honesty, the unknown and concealed dealings between some Administration official or team who have President Obama’s complete trust, some official or officials from the IAEA and the Iranian leadership reached and somehow is tied to and included in its entirety to the P5+1, Iran deal thus receiving ratification alongside the P5+1, Iran nuclear agreement. All of this is performed despite being without any discussion except for those discussions before the United States Senate where its secrecy and existence were stated, and nothing more, with Presidential Security Advisor Susan Rice, who testified to have read, if not assisted in shaping, and Secretary Kerry, who claims he has been told of its existence and has been briefed but is either unable or unwilling to share his extent of knowledge on the secret agreement. The concept of secretive agreements in which most of either government and next to none of the nations’ peoples have any knowledge or are thought to even have the need to know or right to know is anything but an original concept. This situation was the norm in all the history of nations where the people even having rights without title was also unknown until quite recent times. Most of the world today lives under governments which operate in just this manner and it is appearing that none exist where such is not the case.

 

What sets the United States apart is that the people have the right to insist to be included and be knowledgeable of all the workings which take place within the government with the exception of those limited items deemed so sensitive that the people may be kept in the dark for the time being but even those items come into the light eventually. What may be found distressing is that the United States, the supposed bastion of freedom and citizens’ rights has slowly but inexorably been sliding down that slippery slope to the bottom where all the dealings of the government beyond the dictates of laws imposed on the people are kept in secret as the people are deemed of such limited capabilities that they are better off allowing their bettors, those in the government and working as enforcement officers for the government to run things and take care of the weighty issues that the government and only the government is permitted to be privileged. Should this be continued to progress and the United States fall into the darkness of tyrannical governance, then what hope does the rest of the world have where tyrannical governance has been the norm for as long as history had been written and before? There is one simple reason such a state of affairs takes hold of governance, and that is size of government. Apparently when any government reaches a certain size it then expands its scope and domain, often at the expense of lower decentralized governances such as the individual states of the United States. As the central government grows and assumes more and more powers the state, municipal, and local governments suffer and eventually become enforcers for the central government and nothing more. This is where the every size fits all governance becomes the norm and anybody who has resided in one of the major metropolises such as Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Dallas or the others and also lived in a small, and I do mean small town such as Paw Paw, Mich; Emmetsburg, MD; Loveland, Colo; or any of the hundreds of thousands spread blanketing the United States knows, one size never works well in the smallest of places where some of the best and nicest people live and where most people actually know their neighbors. We can only hope that the flame which when it shines brightest allows the individual person to have rights and the government to be at their beck-and-call and never looming over the ‘little people’ as in a true and good governance there are no little people, only little government, as little as proves to be absolutely necessary. Nowhere has such existed successfully where there are sufficient people spread over an area such that they know not those who run their governance and many have become so dejected and separated from their governance and believe it to be beyond any real and actual control that they do not participate or care who their representatives may be. There were stipulations in the original government set up by the constitution of the United States which need being returned as with this modern age such is actually and finally doable and perhaps such could be an article coming to you soon right here at Beyond the Cusp. Until them, hang in there friends.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The World After President Obama

 

There are those amongst my friends and acquaintances who fear that President Obama will declare Martial Law after instigating some false national emergency whose borderline irrational fear mirrors that of those who feared the same from President George W. Bush. There is too much precedent for such to occur and President Obama will step down and give way to the duly elected President in mid-January of 2017 after the 2016 November elections. The question remains what shape will the world present to the next President and what shape will they find the United States presenting them, allowing for actions to steer the United States after their inauguration. The one point that needs to be made is this assessment is made with absolutely no regards from which party or who will be the next President as we can cross that bridge when we reach it. The first thing is the President will face his power on foreign policy will start from a position of actual weakness not felt by the United States since the start of World War II and actually in worse condition than at the end of President Carter or any other. They will be facing a situation where every branch of the military will have had bordering neglect of weapons systems and other vital maintenance with potentially the nuclear deterrent and missile systems in potentially the worst shape with some munitions in such disrepair as to require their destruction and the necessary systems for producing and upgrading these vital assets also teetering on exhausted supplies and neglected condition as to make their management a simple case of dereliction of duty caused by strangled funding and intentional degradation ordered from the highest places. They will find the senior officers to be largely made up of a weakened corps of merely ‘yes men’ and actual pacifists who believe the United States military would best serve the world in the capacity to deliver aid but not necessarily deliver force of arms beyond the shoreline with the exception of utilizing drones and other stand-off weapons partially due to depleted manpower caused by decreased funding and the paring down of the military leadership through neglect to make efforts to retain the officer’s corps.

 

The rebuilding of the military power will take a concerted effort and require massive funding increases which will make any promise of reduction of the tax burden near to impossible to deliver on in the first two years without simply patching some of the most serious areas of military weakness due to nearly eight years of intentional neglect and lack of concerns for the consequences. There will be the need for some of the cancelled military productions and for consideration of developing modern replacement for some of the oldest of the vital systems. The B-52 heavy bombing corps is utilizing airframes mostly built before 1990 and using systems designed originally in the early and mid-1950s and receiving upgrades restricted to that airframe and other limitations due to restrictions resulting from the designs being of antiquated designs and technologies which would require extensive restructuring of the basic airframe which would more likely be better served by replacement of the B-52 fleet with a new long-range bomber designed with forward looking technology. Even the B-1 and B-2 bombers are utilizing old technology and would require a complete overhaul of systems and even design. The Air Force may be better served with considering a completely new strategy where the pilots of fighter squadrons no longer were seated directly in the aircraft but instead flying the fighters from remoted position of a dedicated stealth aircraft where multiple fighters are controlled from relative safe stand-off positions. Such remotely controlled aircraft could retain much of the size of the current airframes which now being remotely controlled the airframes could be designed with intent of making high-G maneuvers previously impossible to execute due to having a pilot onboard the aircraft. Such a fleet utilizing such design parameters would revolutionize air combat for the future in ways thought unimaginable just ten years ago. The same considerations could be utilized in many modern systems when their next redesign is due especially armored combat vehicles using similar control systems allowing for the replacement of crews with automated systems which would permit decreased size and vulnerability of profile while retaining the accuracy and armaments of modern warfare armored systems. Replacing the infantryman with a robotic system is not yet feasible but should be a priority task presented to DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) with an expected rollout of several prototypes each providing the same abilities with additional features possible only in a robotic system. These systems would still require human operators who would make final decisions of when to shoot and when to stand down. It is doubtful that the American population is ready for terminator styled soldiers operating independently reliant solely on advanced AI (artificial intelligence) units quite yet, but even that would be a presentable concept when considering the demands that any military action place risk on the troops minimizing any possibility of human casualties.

 

The stress on military upgrading and rebuilding is simply due to the requirement of a force to back up policy is required if one intends to have a positive position in dealings with other nations or a defensive position which by requirement is overtly careful so as not to provoke anger or rejection knowing that the military is unable to back up and enforce policies and other demands including protection of the homeland and its interests overseas. This is crucial because the next President will be facing difficulties of the United States’ own making across the globe. Europe will be facing economic challenges which will render their policies being ever more defensive and cautious with numerous European nations facing unrest within their borders. The potential for an explosion of bloodshed within the European continent is becoming not only a future threat but approaching transforming into an imminent threat uncontrolled illegal immigration will be approaching the tipping point where the European culture will become challenged which will push the European indigenous population to the point where the decision will be the same as it has been throughout human history when two disparate and opposing cultures reach the point where the minority population decides to attempt, through intimidation and other threats, to impose their norms on the ever shrinking and aging majority replacing their culture and supplanting them as those wielding power going into the future. Should Europe when so challenged react in the fashion which has served them in the past, with such response as often typified be referencing the Inquisitions, the result will be just as or even more horrific. Europe as a whole has a very disturbing history of open warfare between competing positions which were demanding for far lesser changes in the culture causing horrific wars even including civil conflicts within one’s borders. The possibility of similar response today is all too real. One need not look that far afield to bear witness to such results where internal forces rise up and before all is decided, outside forces enter the war hijacking it to forcefully take over the nation wracked already in violence in an attempt to install a new set of leadership just as dictatorial, just as oppressive, just as cruel and potentially even more barbarous than the one being overturned. Such disasters even threaten to redraw the maps casting the formation for the sham and relativity designed solely to enrich foreign investments. Such is what is being fought over and is the main reasoning given by ISIS who is intent on supplanting both the former dictator and those who sought to replace their dictator with a modern system most likely with elected representation resulting in what is oft referred to as a democracy. Should ISIS prove victorious, there will be a new leadership in the form of a Caliph, an old title being restored so as to impose an old dictatorial leadership who takes their claim to the throne based on historic familial relationship to former Caliphs all the way to Muhammad thus adding a religious basis for their power. Such a religious tyranny would be very similar though diametrically opposed to the theocratic dictatorship of Iran, the other eight-hundred-pound gorilla in this struggle. The third leg of this societal struggle would be represented by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil el-Sisi who has yet to be fully defined and is the sole representative desiring to inspire his nation to become the towering example of how an Arab and Muslim state is capable of using elections as the tool for actually choosing the national governance but also guaranteed to be free and open elections even should he be defeated, and then comes the real test as to whether or not the newly elected leader after President Sisi also chooses to continue the liberal march into modernity or chooses to install themselves as the unchallengeable leader of Egypt. Meanwhile, there are three distinct powers currently vying to lead by two of these and the third simply has desires of surviving the current assaults on its existence which has been an active fight since its inception in May of 1948 and has been pressed to remain on the cusp between militaristic power and start-up nation with a thriving economy wishing only to be unleashed by the restraints necessitated by a constant threat of war.

 

The largest challenge looming on the horizon and very possibly to explode before the end of President Obama’s remaining time in office is of his own doing. The potential for the start of a struggle that would forever change the world may have started once President Obama completes his own set goal of bringing Iran back into the world of nations. The manner in which President Obama set out to perform this miracle would have entailed defanging Iran and then inviting them to join the nations of the world with peaceful intentions by Iran. Instead we have a United States President blindly charging forth demanding this will be his legacy, the making of Iran a coequal partner of the Middle East. The one unavoidable fact is that just as Obamacare (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) will be his domestic policy legacy; just as, if not more, dreadful will be his foreign policy legacy as Iran becomes a nuclear power which will have established a basic arsenal of deliverable nuclear warheads consisting of minimally a dozen and more likely three to four dozen with at least one third being thermonuclear warheads (hydrogen fusion warheads). This will place Iran well ahead of whatever plans Saudi Arabia may have in place. This announcement may come at any moment all dependent upon the extent and advancement of the Iranian nuclear weapons program. The truth is the world has absolutely no clue as to whether or not Iran already possesses a number of nuclear warheads hidden away from the prying eyes wandering across the skies both orbital and others ground based aircraft. The one truth we do know is that once it becomes obvious that Iran has become a nuclear power, then it will not take numerous other Middle East nations to develop and start building their nuclear weapons arsenals. This new weapons conflict may be solely restrained by the availability of Uranium in any form to be enriched to weapons level of over ninety-percent and then its merging with the rest of the warhead. Below is the list of known nuclear weapons states and an estimate on their numbers of warheads. Once Iran has announced or been determined beyond a reasonable doubt to be armed with nuclear weapons, then the list below will become somewhat obsolete as it is rumored that Saudi Arabia has a standing agreement with Pakistan to purchase approximately one dozen nuclear warheads just so Saudi Arabia will be covered while they acquire and build their own weapons thereafter. One can also expect that Egypt and Turkey would follow suit and develop their own nuclear weapons systems. The breakdown of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, also referred to as the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), will tempt certain other members to choose to opt out and develop their own nuclear weapons. Some nations may decide to develop and build their own nuclear weapons while retaining their place on the NPT committees. Some of the other nations which might decide the time has come to join the nuclear club include Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Taiwan and Japan to name a few that came to mind. The nuclear club is perched to become a far larger club of nations where its membership will no longer be the reserved of the very elite but start to resemble another useless body, the United Nations General Assembly which has become a place where the barbarians sit in judgement making decisions that carry no weight behind them beyond the media attention they generate.

1) Russia 7,500
2) United States 7,100
3) France 300
4) China 250
5) United Kingdom 225
6) Pakistan120 (estimated)
7) India 110 (estimated)
8) Israel 80 (estimated)
9) North Korea < 10 (estimated)
10) Iran ??

 

The final stage is China and her continuous efforts to claim the South China Sea and all the islands found within that general area. The problem is there are other nations who claim these islands and who hold claims just as valid. There is a chance of a conflict here though one has to imagine that China is the eight-hundred-pound gorilla of Asia as her size and modernized army with weapons to match and including nuclear weapons. This is the main reason that Japan, Taiwan and even the Philippines might all be slowly reaching the conclusion that if they are to prevent China taking over the islands one after the other inexorably slinking towards their main Isles thus posing an ever growing threat to these Island nations, they are considering that which would have a decade ago been unthinkable, joining the nuclear armed nations so as to have equal threat potential against China. More as an aside than a warning, one must also remember that the most recent Russian madman, Putin, has delusions of reestablishing Greater Russia and now that China and Russia are back on speaking terms, they have been talking of an alliance for sharing technological advances, nuclear technology, weapons research and development. This has an ominous side in that most terrorist groups have either Russia or China at the head of their supply chain. All taken in, we find the nation of the United States with a military that many have pointed to as merely having the strength the United States could project at the very start of World War II, Russia and China ascending, Iran, supported by Russia and China, being handed nuclear weapons and a very large industrial scale systems to construct said weapons from where they will begin to exercise power over the Middle East and perhaps beyond to Central and South America through Venezuela and Cuba being aided by Russia who appears poised to reacquire the lands of Eastern Europe and Central Eurasia, reestablishing the concept of a Greater Russia. Additionally there is China with an ever more capable navy claiming and taking one island after another while claiming all of the South China Sea and threatening to replace America as the preeminent power in the Pacific including the coastal areas in South America and made all the worse as the United States had gifted China with owning the ports at both ends of the Panama Canal even before the turn of the calendar to the twenty-first century.Then Iran has as luck would have it control over the Straits of Hormuz through which almost all of the Middle Eastern oil is transported to the world and is taking control the straits of Bab el Mandeb through their proxy in Yemen, the Houthis, which grants them control over the Suez Canal as this is where the Red Sea enters the Gulf of Aden leading to the Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and the world thus granting Iran control over one third of the world’s trade and oil while China controls the busiest sea in the South China Sea as well as the second busiest canal in the Panama Canal. How much more change can the world hope to endure?

 

Beyond the Cusp