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Commentary: The next war?
Arnaud De Borchgrave
UPI
Thursday Aug 30, 2007
After a brief interruption of his New Hampshire vacation
to meet President Bush in the family compound at Kennebunkport,
Maine, French President Nicolas Sarkozy came away convinced his
U.S. counterpart is serious about bombing Iran's secret nuclear
facilities. That's the reading as it filtered back to Europe's
foreign ministries:
Addressing the annual meeting of France's ambassadors to 188 countries,
Sarkozy said either Iran lives up to its international obligations
and relinquishes its nuclear ambitions or it will be bombed into
compliance.
Sarkozy also made clear he did not agree with the Iranian-bomb-or-bombing-of-Iran
position, which reflects the pledge Bush made to his loyalists
and endorsed by GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain and
independent Sen. Joe Lieberman.
But Sarkozy recognized unless Iran's theocrats stop enriching
uranium to weapons-grade levels under International Atomic Energy
Agency inspection, we will all be "faced with an alternative
that I call catastrophic."
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A ranking Swiss official, speaking privately, said, "Anyone
with a modicum of experience in the Middle East knows that any
bombing of Iran would touch off at the very least regional instability
and what could be an unmitigated disaster for Western interests."
Leaks about the Bush administration's plan to brand Iran's 125,000-strong
Revolutionary Guards a global terrorist organization are widely
interpreted as a major step on the escalator to military action.
Belatedly, Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer, has
signed a contract with Lockheed Martin for the training of 35,000
elite guards to be assigned to the protection of the kingdom's
widely scattered oil installations.
With 25 percent of the world's oil reserves, Riyadh has earmarked
$5 billion to train and field what will be a high-tech force ASAP.
Eighteen months ago the desert kingdom was jolted by an al-Qaida
terrorist squad that managed to penetrate the first two layers
of defenses at Abqaiq, the nerve center of the entire oil infrastructure.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has now stated publicly
his country holds the key to the conditions of a U.S. withdrawal
from Iraq. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, much criticized by
the United States for his lack of leadership and deserted by half
his Cabinet, is much praised in Tehran, where he has gone twice
in 11 months to confer with Iranian leaders. Ahmadinejad also
says Iran is ready to fill the power vacuum in Iraq following
a U.S. withdrawal.
"The political power of the occupiers is collapsing rapidly,"
he said, "and soon we will see a huge power vacuum in the
region." The United States is not alone in trying to prove
Ahmadinejad's geopolitical weather forecast wrong.
Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Cooperation Council allies in the Gulf,
Egypt and Jordan are terrified at the idea of Iraq falling under
Iranian domination. Hoping to head off a U.S.-Iran military confrontation,
European countries are still pinning their hopes on major Iranian
concessions at the IAEA in Vienna. Iran is back to cooperating
with the IAEA -- but only one comma or semicolon at a time.
The three EU countries acting as U.S. surrogates on nuclear matters
with Iran and IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei detect progress where
the United States sees only stalling. Iran is still resisting
short-notice inspections of sites that are not officially declared
nuclear facilities and where secret nuclear work is believed to
be taking place.
Tehran's only objective at the IAEA and the U.N. Security Council
is to head off further economic sanctions by its major EU trading
partners -- thus, the mantra that its only interest in nuclear
matters is as an alternative source of energy in a country already
awash in oil taxes credulity.
Both the Bush administration and Israel are painstakingly fashioning
a casus belli with Iran. For Israel, the training and weapons
support Iran furnishes Hezbollah in Lebanon (now with more rockets
of all kinds than it had before the 2006 war when it fired 4,000
into Israel) and Hamas in Gaza (now equipped with Katyusha rockets
and a range of 10.6 miles), coupled with Ahmadinejad's existential
threats against the Jewish state, are sufficient evidence to justify
airstrikes against Iran's nuclear facilities.
And for the White House, there is daily evidence of Iran's Revolutionary
Guards meddling in Iraq, from improvised explosive devices made
in Iran to behind-the-scenes dominance in the affairs of the oil-rich
south.
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INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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