Saturday, April 11, 2015
It's the Saturday Email Bag - What Will the Middle East Look Like in a Year?
Dear readers, the Saturday email mailbag contained one question that is so interesting that we'll concentrate on it today for our Saturday emails. ~~~~~ Here's the question : "What do you see for the floundering Middle East? Yemen is approaching a stalemate between Shiite & Sunni. The Sudan is about to conduct predetermined elections - maybe even pre-counted. Iran is - well - Iran...winner took all. Israel will not go away quietly in the night for sure. So what is the next 12 months in the ME to bring." ~~~~~ Now this is a question that could fill a book. But, let's cover some key points. ~~~~~ Iran will certainly be the major story during the next year. I think President Obama wil sign a deal in the next six months. It will contain his agreement to lift sanctions immediately, with perhaps some window-dressing minor check points meant to show the world that Obama won. Congress will not agree to lift its current sanctions and an impasse will ensue. President Obama will brush aside the crisis by insisting that he has sole authority to make the nuclear deal with Iran. While Congress and the courts sort out the impasse, Iran will finish its uranium enrichment and achieve nuclear weapon capability, partly with the funds made available by Obama's unilateral lifting of the US sanctions in defiance of Congress. Europe, eager for Iranian natural gas and lucrative business deals, will agree to lift the UN and EU sanctions against Iran and argue that the US sanctions are a purely American question. The US Congress-Obama impasse will not be resolved until a new President is elected in November 2016. ~~~~~ Of course, everything else in the Middle East will hinge on the Iran situation. Afghanistan and Pakistan will join the Iranian coalition, refusing to enter the Saudi coalition trying to stop Iran's conquest of tbe Middle East. While Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, the Arab Emirates and Israel will hold Iran at bay, Iraq will be effectively partitioned -- with only the region from Baghdad south to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in West-friendly hands. Syria will be partitioned, too, with only Damascus and the area west toward Lebanon remaining in Bashar al-Assad's hands because of active Iranian-Hezbollah support. The Palestinian Authority will be further weakened by factional infighting, but it will have time to prepare a dossier for the International Criminal Court that charges Israel with war crimes. While this is building as a major international story, Iran will quietly take total control of Gaza, calling the shots that the money-starved Hamas will have to agree to. Yemen will be in a state of civil war, approaching the situation now in Syria, with a humanitarian crisis of major proportions. The Red Sea and Suez will be kept open by the US Navy, with Egyptian and Saudi help, but there will be skirmishes with Iranian and Russian ships. ~~~~~ That brings us to Israel. I think Israel will begin commando-type incursions into Iran to strike and weaken its key nuclear facilities. Israel will also brcome much more active in the Sinai, and will use that base to protect Suez and the Canal, freeing Egypt to concentrate on Yemen and Libya to its west. ~~~~~ This could be called the worst-case scenario -- one we would all like to avoid. And it is avoidable, but only if, somehow, someone convinces President Obama to withhold his signature from any Iran nuclear deal that resembles the one we are faced with right now.
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Now thus is a topic and explanation that could carry on fir a week. Thank you fir the answer and thanks to who ever asked the question.
ReplyDeleteBut who is anyone to go in and be portioning a foreign country? In the Middle east is that not just a shot glass full of water on a forest fire?
ReplyDeleteA great question and an even better answer we readers were treated to today. . But the answer lies I think (for what is worth) with the complete and total destruction of Iran’s nuclear program. And then start immediately to fix the personal damage caused over decades in the region. Fixing the people would be possibly the greatest PR action the west (United States) could make. Another WW II Marshall plan! It did work after WW II even though we repaired the enemy too – setting up this situation in the Middle East.
Let’s be honest, but with all the best of intentions the United States has been greatly responsible for the world as it is today. It’s like the little boy on the school playground; he can’t buy off the bullies or buy long lasting friends with lollypops every day forever. Sooner or later the boy must stand upright and do what his heart and soul tells him is right … asserting himself and his right to be there.
And for the United States to not be active, a presence in the Middle East is to have 6 or 7 more countries building or buying nuclear weapons. And the continuance of human suffrage and death.
Or the West simply arms Israel, the Saudi's, etc. to the hilt and turn them loose. But one way or another the Iranian problem must go away, and quickly before they have an operational nuclear device - if that is not the substance of their intolerable arrogance in telling we who could make them disappear overnight what is and is not acceptable.
ReplyDeleteBut they do have a United States president that stands with them.
By United nations estimates a third of all fighters in Yemen are "children."
ReplyDeleteThe Iran-backed Houthi militias are storing ammunition and weapons in residential areas in Yemen.
Unless we are to sadly alter our moral standards and start killing children and innocent civilians in bombing runs, how we possibly stop the Houthi's (Iran sponsored & supplied) from marching at will through the country?