The Powder Keg In The Middle East

Charles Krauthammer is looking at the events going on in the Middle East regarding the Israeli airstrike on Syrian nuclear sites and sees the beginning of a erupting volcano:

Apart from the usual suspects — Syria, Iran, Libya and Russia — only two countries registered strong protests to the Israeli strike: Turkey and North Korea. Turkey we can understand. Its military may have permitted Israel an overflight corridor without ever having told the Islamist civilian government. But North Korea? What business is this of North Korea’s? Unless it was a North Korean facility being hit.

Which raises alarms for many reasons. First, it would undermine the whole North Korean disarmament process. Pyongyang might be selling its stuff to other rogue states or perhaps just temporarily hiding it abroad while permitting ostentatious inspections back home.

Second, there are ominous implications for the Middle East. Syria has long had chemical weapons — on Monday, Jane’s Defence Weekly reported on an accident that killed dozens of Syrians and Iranians loading a nerve-gas warhead onto a Syrian missile — but Israel will not tolerate a nuclear Syria.

Tensions are already extremely high because of Iran’s headlong rush to go nuclear. In fending off sanctions and possible military action, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has chosen a radically aggressive campaign to assemble, deploy, flaunt and partially activate Iran’s proxies in the Arab Middle East:

Meanwhile the WaPo writes that Israel shared the information they had gathered with the US, that information put North Korea nuclear personnel inside Syria:

Israel’s decision to attack Syria on Sept. 6, bombing a suspected nuclear site set up in apparent collaboration with North Korea, came after Israel shared intelligence with President Bush this summer indicating that North Korean nuclear personnel were in Syria, U.S. government sources said.

The Bush administration has not commented on the Israeli raid or the underlying intelligence. Although the administration was deeply troubled by Israel’s assertion that North Korea was assisting the nuclear ambitions of a country closely linked with Iran, sources said, the White House opted against an immediate response because of concerns it would undermine long-running negotiations aimed at persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear program.

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Ultimately, however, the United States is believed to have provided Israel with some corroboration of the original intelligence before Israel proceeded with the raid, which hit the Syrian facility in the dead of night to minimize possible casualties, the sources said.

Charles again:

Three days earlier, a freighter flying the North Korean flag docked in the Syrian port city of Tartus with a shipment of "cement." Long way to go for cement. Within days, a top State Department official warned that "there may have been contact between Syria and some secret suppliers for nuclear equipment." Three days later, the six-party meeting on dismantling North Korea’s nuclear facilities scheduled for Sept. 19 was suddenly postponed, officially by China, almost certainly at the behest of North Korea.

Tie all this with Iran’s headlong rush to get the bomb and we have a large powder keg set to go off.  Syria was trying to the get the bomb and was bombed.  What do you think the chances are that Israel will allow Iran to get the bomb now?  And there is no chance that the nut Ahmadinejad will back down.

This is what happens when the world community takes it easy on a nation that is so obviously bent on destruction.  Iran wants Israel wiped off the face of the earth and then does everything in its power to get a nuke.  What does the world community do?  Shrug and say "what can we do?"

I think Isreal understands what must be done and Iran won’t like it.

Curt

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