We Must Stop A Middle-Eastern Arms Race By Any Means Necessary

by John Hawkins | November 6, 2006 8:29 am

The United States must use any means necessary — ANY MEANS — to stop this from happening[1]:

“THE spectre of a nuclear race in the Middle East was raised at the weekend as six Arab states announced they were embarking on atomic technology programs.

The move, which follows the failure by the West to curb Iran’s controversial nuclear program, could see a rapid spread of nuclear reactors in one of the world’s most unstable regions, stretching from the Gulf to the Levant and into North Africa.

The countries involved were named by the International Atomic Energy Agency as Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Tunisia and the UAE have also shown interest.

All want to build civilian nuclear power plants, as they and the Iranians are permitted to under international law. But the rush to nuclear power has raised Western suspicions that the real intention is to acquire nuclear technology that could be used to make the first Arab atomic bomb.

“Some Middle East states, including Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Saudi Arabia, have shown initial interest in using nuclear power primarily for desalination purposes,” the deputy director-general of the IAEA, Tomohiro Yamaguchi, told the business weekly Middle Digest.”

Unfortunately, this is a direct consequence of not confronting Iran more forcefully over their nuclear weapons and some of us have been saying that might happen for quite a while:

“If Iran gets nukes, it would set off a chain reaction that would likely lead to Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey all acquiring nuclear weapons just to make sure Iran doesn’t get any funny ideas about uniting the muslim world the hard way. If that many autocratic, mercurial nations with ties to terrorism were to acquire nukes, it would almost guarantee at some point that we’d see a nuclear war in the Middle-East and terrorists detonating nuclear weapons in Western cities.

Now some people foolishly believe the threat of MAD (mutually assured destruction) would protect the world from a nuclear war even if nukes were to spread across the globe. But you cannot always count on the other side being rational, especially when you’re talking about religious fanatics, deranged dictators, or terrorist supporting nations who may believe — perhaps even correctly — that a terrorist group might be able to sneak a nuclear weapon into the United States that couldn’t be traced back to them.

So when I say that we should be willing to go to any lengths, even war to disarm North Korea and prevent Iran from attaining nukes, this is the scenario I’m thinking about down the line. If we don’t deal with the two remaining members of the Axis of Evil, I fear that the ramifications of our actions down the road will be more than we can bear.” — October 30, 2003[2]

What’s happening is that these nations have concluded that we don’t have the will to stop Iran from getting nukes and so they’re planning to get nuclear weapons to defend themselves.

That means the first thing we need to do is make it clear that we do have the will to stop Iran. In order to do that, we need to hit their nuclear missile sites as soon as it’s feasibly possible. While we’re in there, it wouldn’t hurt to try to kill Ahmadinejad, a few Mullahs, blow up their refineries, and do as much damage to their military as possible.

Then, after that’s completed, we’ve got to threaten and cajole those other nations into giving up their nuclear ambitions. It would, of course, be better to talk them out of it without having to use our military, but if necessary, we should use military means to stop Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and the UAE from acquiring nukes because if they’re allowed to proceed, it’s a forgone conclusion that nuclear weapons will eventually end up in the hands of terrorists and will be detonated in the United States.

No matter what happens in Iraq or in the rest of George Bush’s presidency, if he allows a Middle-Eastern arms races to get going on his watch, his presidency will be an utter and complete failure.

Endnotes:
  1. this from happening: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20706445-2703,00.html
  2. October 30, 2003: https://rightwingnews1.wpenginepowered.com/archives/week_2003_10_26.PHP#001463

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