Nuclear Iran and US foreign policy

In Dore Gold's The Rise Of Nuclear Iran, Gold predicts a nuclear strike isn't the first threat the world will face. The most likely scenario is that Iran would use their nuclear weapons as an umbrella, a shield of protection while Hezbollah and others carry out terrorist attacks worldwide.

How can we know this for sure? Because it has already happened with Pakistan.

No sooner had Pakistan acquired nuclear weapons (a significant failure of US foreign policy) did al Qaeda make its first strike. In May 1998, Pakistan carried out its first successful nuclear test. By August of the same year, al Qaeda had simultaneously struck two US embassies in East Africa, killing more than 200 people and injuring many more. This was also the same year Osama bin Laden declared jihad on America.

Of course, the reason American presidents and diplomats have remained silent on Pakistan's role in all this is because the US is attempting to keep Pakistan within its sphere of influence. Thus the US could hardly call Pakistan a major problem in the worldwide fight to defeat Islamic terrorism, and still expect Pakistan to cooperate with the US.

And for anyone doubting the connection between al Qaeda and Pakistan consider where OBL was assassinated. If you know your history of the creation of the Taliban and al Qaeda, you'll know that America, along with Saudi petro-dollars went into funding the mujahadeen in Afghanistan against Soviet invaders. All monies were channeled through Pakistan, and funds were only given to those militants with a similar religious belief. Ahmed Shah Masoud of the Northern Alliance, for example, received nothing from the Pakistanis, despite having done his fair share (or more than his fare share, if you believe his own accounts) of repelling the Russian invaders.

IRAQ: A FAILURE OR THE KEY TO VICTORY?

I often wondered why in the war on terror the allied forces only seemed to target countries whose connection to Islamic terrorism were secondary: Afghanistan and Iraq. What about the state sponsors: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and to a lesser extent, Iran?

On the face of it, this seemed illogical. Although Afghanistan is obviously where the Taliban ruled, al Qaeda had many training bases and OBL was hiding, it was Pakistan, with Saudi petro-dollars, that was funding the madrassas. It was Saudi Arabia that was funding the construction of mosques worldwide with the Wahabi-compliant imams that now do their share of the Islamic burden, churning out terrorists (such as the Boston Bombers). Thus fighting in terrorist 'backwaters' seemed to be like standing at the end of a long conveyor belt, shooting the terrorists as they came off the production line, but leaving the factory and its machinery unscathed...

But by 2003, Iraq had been under heavy sanctions and also happened to have colossal oil reserves big enough to rival the Saudis. Even though in terms of state sponsorship of terrorism, Iraq had taken part in terror operations against the US, it was a long way down the list of priorities in terms of terrorism prevention. Take out al Qaeda, take out the state sponsors of terrorism and you'd likely never hear from Saddam again. However, just taking out a country like Saudi Arabia wasn't so easy because of Pakistan's nuclear umbrella.

The possible way around all this seems to have been a little bit of chess. Take out Saddam. Rebuild Iraq, lift sanctions, get her oil pumping again which would help to rebuild the country, and this would also have the effect of significantly reducing the Saudi revenues, and cut off not only al Qaeda but Pakistan's main source of finance as well.

In the last few years we've seen exactly this come to fruition. Iraq has significantly cut into the house of Saud's oil profits with the result that the Saudis are panicking. It's not only that the Saudis are having to share world oil profits with Iraq, it's that Western countries are also finding ways of becoming energy independent (thanks in large part to Israeli innovations in the technique of extracting oil from rock, known as fracking). As a result of this, the usual idiots have come out with scare stories about fracking, chief among them actor Matt Damon.

But there is one major problem along this road: Barack Obama. By taking out Iraq, the Americans were removing the single largest buffer to Iranian hegemony in the region and throughout the world. But by pulling out of Iraq so soon, Obama effectively gave Iraq to Iran. Iraq, a neighbour of Iran, is teeming with Iranian agents. Tehran would only need to give the word, and the Iranian agents working as bodyguards to many Iraqi officials would carry out their duties, whether this means assassinations or anything else.

The other problem is that Iraq has been helping Iran skirt sanctions. This means that it can simply carry on with its nuclear program. With America's poor history when it comes to stopping nuclear proliferation (and don't forget the fiasco over N.Korea acquiring nukes), it's a safe bet that if left to Obama, Iran will acquire nuclear weapons. Certainly, there isn't much room for interpretation when watching how Obama delays and plays Israeli PM Netanyahu, promising to deliver bunker busting bombs (Israel has been waiting since 2009), and then doesn't. The latest proof of Obama's intrasience when it comes to the Iranian threat is getting the EU to boycott the bits of Israel it doesn't like as a means of pressuring Israel to come to the negotiating table with the people that vow to wipe the Jews off the map. 

After more than 10 years of failed negotiations with Iran, this leaves us only with the military option.

Oil has obviously been a boon for the Islamic world and we've seen the resurgence of Islamic power/terrorism in conjunction with the resurgence in their oil revenues. The US has only had a decade of wars and is already critically weak economically (partly because of those wars, but mostly because of the left). It does not take much imagination to see what the world will be like if the 1400 year old sunni/shia rivalry occurs under the immunity of a nuclear umbrella.

Israel is our last hope.