Courting Mideast Nuclear Disaster
The Obama Administration is hallucinating if it believes that clamping new economic sanctions on Iran will contain the threat of a Middle East nuclear arms race. Tehran may be the least of our problems, if protecting Israel from nuclear Holocaust ranks high on our strategic agenda. Unlike Iran, which appears to be struggling to build a nuclear arsenal, Pakistan already has one. Were a right-wing coup to topple the already fragile regime of President Asif Ali Zardar, it would take less than five minutes for Islamabad’s seventy nuclear warheads now trained on New Delhi, Mumbai and Calcutta, to target Tel Aviv.
That scenario is not far-fetched in the least. Investigators involved in the arrest this week of failed Time Square bombing suspect, Faisal Shahzad, uncovered possible ties to a militant Pakistani group called Jaish-e-Mohammad. Rogue elements within the Pakistani intelligence community established it in the 1990s, to fight in the India-controlled parts of Kashmir. This incident is merely the latest in a string of events, including the 2007 assassination of party leader Benazir Bhutto by elements within al-Qaeda, which leads some observers to conclude that the current-U.S. allied government in Islamabad is losing control of the country.
And let’s not forget Syria’s nuclear ambitions. In 2007, The Israel Air Force launched a surgical strike against what were believed to be a Syrian nuclear weapons facility being built in the Deir ez-Zor region on the border with Turkey. Then there’s Saudi Arabia, which according to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in a February 2010 interview on CNN, also has nuclear ambitions, which could be met in a matter of months, were Iran allowed to develop its nuclear arsenal.
So, what options do the U.S. have in forestalling the kind of arms buildup that could nudge the oil-producing Middle East to the brink of thermonuclear war? The Obama Administration has taken its first baby step, by supporting a United Nations resolution calling for a nuclear-weapons-free Middle East. But it has to do much more. In 2008, former President Jimmy Carter acknowledged for the first time, publicly, that Israel had 150 nuclear weapons in its arsenal. Nevertheless, Tel Aviv continues to maintain a policy of “nuclear ambiguity,” in refusing to admit that it has these weapons. This “open” secret may have made sense decades ago, acting as a deterrent to Arab governments bent on destroying the Jewish State. But, we must face up to the fact that times have changed. The strategic interests of the U.S. can no longer be met by denying the existence of the very thing that is fuelling the nuclear ambitions of Iran, Syria and other Middle Eastern nations.
That scenario is not far-fetched in the least. Investigators involved in the arrest this week of failed Time Square bombing suspect, Faisal Shahzad, uncovered possible ties to a militant Pakistani group called Jaish-e-Mohammad. Rogue elements within the Pakistani intelligence community established it in the 1990s, to fight in the India-controlled parts of Kashmir. This incident is merely the latest in a string of events, including the 2007 assassination of party leader Benazir Bhutto by elements within al-Qaeda, which leads some observers to conclude that the current-U.S. allied government in Islamabad is losing control of the country.
And let’s not forget Syria’s nuclear ambitions. In 2007, The Israel Air Force launched a surgical strike against what were believed to be a Syrian nuclear weapons facility being built in the Deir ez-Zor region on the border with Turkey. Then there’s Saudi Arabia, which according to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in a February 2010 interview on CNN, also has nuclear ambitions, which could be met in a matter of months, were Iran allowed to develop its nuclear arsenal.
So, what options do the U.S. have in forestalling the kind of arms buildup that could nudge the oil-producing Middle East to the brink of thermonuclear war? The Obama Administration has taken its first baby step, by supporting a United Nations resolution calling for a nuclear-weapons-free Middle East. But it has to do much more. In 2008, former President Jimmy Carter acknowledged for the first time, publicly, that Israel had 150 nuclear weapons in its arsenal. Nevertheless, Tel Aviv continues to maintain a policy of “nuclear ambiguity,” in refusing to admit that it has these weapons. This “open” secret may have made sense decades ago, acting as a deterrent to Arab governments bent on destroying the Jewish State. But, we must face up to the fact that times have changed. The strategic interests of the U.S. can no longer be met by denying the existence of the very thing that is fuelling the nuclear ambitions of Iran, Syria and other Middle Eastern nations.
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