A nuclear arms race in the Middle East
Amir Taheri wrote quite a fascinating article about the upcoming nuclear arms race in the Middle East. He argues that Iran’s nuclear program will inspire countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt to do the same; they fear Iranian supremacy and will do everything in their power to restore the balance of power.
Although Taheri is certainly right about that, he forgets to take one important country into consideration: Turkey. There’s no way that Turkey will accept an Iranian regional superpower. Turks and Persians have battled with each other for centuries over dominance in the Middle East. If Iran develops nuclear weapons and becomes the power in the region, Turkey will quickly follow suit; it will not have another choice.
Luckily for the Turks they are supported by the West. They can count on even more support at the moment Iran gets its hands on weapons of mass destruction. The United States especially will encourage Ankara to take all necessary steps to restore the balance of power and to push the Iranians and their sphere of influence back.
Turks have been the dominant force in the region for many hundreds of years; their main competitors, however, weren’t Arabs but Persians. If the latter form a threat once again, Turks will do what they have to do geopolitical-wise; they’ll step up as well.
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I’m starting the official countdown clock to time how long it takes for Rudi to show up and question Taheri’s credibility.
T minus 1 sec…
T minus 2 sec….
LOL Taheri has zero credibility. If you wanted some serious reading this TMV post about the Cordesman report at CSIS. Cordesman talks about nukes,Iran and Israel, while Taheri ignores Israel.
1 hour 3 minutes
Nonsense. First of all, Saudi Arabia’s and Egypt’s nuclear programs are as old as Iran. In fact Egypt was caught conducting undeclared weapons-related nuclear experiments before Iran was. Secondly, it is ironic that Iran’s non-existing nukes would cause proliferation, and yet not Israel’s actual, existing nukes.
Amir Taheri is a neocon who is an outright liar. This was the same fellow who falsely claimed that Iran was passing a law requiring Jews to wear yellow badges.
Heh, about what I expected, Rudi.
And BTW, the link to the ’serious reading’ you cited from TMV led to a blank screen with the message “Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn’t here.”
Here is the link I wanted to include.
http://themoderatevoice.com/27284/roadmap-for-an-israeli-attack-on-iranian-nuclear-facilities/
As Hass mentioned, Taheri is tainted. Cordesman is reliable, Thaeri not so…
Just compare Cordesman’s body of work versus Patches.
Those with longer memories might recall that Rudi was much less accepting of Cordesman’s reliability when the issue was the Iraq war. Of course, now that Cordesman is taking a position Rudi likes, he is deemed “reliable”. I am sure that will only last until some issue arises where Cordesman departs from far-left orthodoxy, at which point Rudi will again turn shamelessly on a dime and declare such dissent to be heresy.
The bottom line is that, to Rudi, compliance with far-left orthodoxy is the ONLY decision rule that determines whether or not one is “reliable”.
But at least Rudi himself is “reliable” — reliably orthodox in his slavish adherence to conventional far-left talking points.
The quality of Rudi’s spamish “here’s-links-to-three-others-who-repeat-the-same-talking-points” comments may be low, but their predictability is very high.
It’s almost as if…
Hey! Rudi! Are you subscribed to JournoList too?
By the way, I have sources within the region who support Taheri’s prediction about Egypt and Saudi Arabia (as well as other Gulf states), even though they would disagree VERY strongly with Taheri’s prescriptions for U.S. responses to the problem. Thus, while it is legitimate to engage with Taheri’s position on a number of levels, Rudi’s knee-jerk blanket condemnation is poorly suited on the substantive issue level here as well.
Jason I downloaded the report and started to read it as time permits. Please show where I cherry picked Cordesman.
This search doesn’t show the alleged bias:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cordesman++site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.poligazette.com%2F&btnG=Search
I spent hours trying to download the latest Cordesman report – Firefox no likey, Google Chrome OK.