Business Day (S. Africa): "Attack On Iran Could Bring Devastation To Arab World"

[Hissyspit]

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/topstories.aspx?ID=BD4A351269

Posted to the web on: 03 January 2007
Attack on Iran could bring Devastation to Arab World
Patrick Seale

ALTHOUGH peering into the future is a hazardous business, it would not be rash to say that of all the potential man-made catastrophes that might afflict the world this coming year, for sheer destructiveness none would surpass a US or Israeli attack on Iran. Is such an attack probable or even possible? Regrettably, it is. In the current confrontation with Iran, the military option remains very much on the table. In both the US and Israel, the same military planners, political lobbyists and armchair strategists that pressed the US to attack Iraq are now urging it to strike Iran — and for much the same reasons. These reasons may be briefly summarised as the need to control the Middle East’s oil resources and deny them to potential rivals, such as China; the wish to demonstrate the US’s ability to project military power across the globe; and Israel’s determination to maintain its supremacy over any regional challenger, especially one as recklessly provocative as Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. An effective US or Israeli strike against Iran would have to destroy not only its nuclear facilities but also its ability to hit back — its entire military-industrial complex.

The attack would have to be so devastating it would rob Iran of the will and means to retaliate. This could take weeks of air and missile attacks and, because of the size of the country and the dispersal of its military assets, would be difficult to achieve.

It seems more than likely that if attacked, Iran will, one way or another, manage to strike back — against US troops in Iraq, against Israel, and against US bases and US allies in the Gulf.

Of all these targets, the Arab states of the Gulf — the most prosperous, modern and forward-looking of the Arab world — are perhaps the most vulnerable.

The effect on Arab society would be incalculable.

The effect would also be devastating on US-Arab relations, on Israel’s long-term security, on the flow of oil from the Gulf, on the oil price, on the economies of the industrial world and on the already highly fragile dollar. And yet, some influential voices argue that the only way the US can hope to “win” in Iraq is to destroy Iran.

MORE AT LINK

Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East and the author of The Struggle for Syria; Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.

[Strelnikov_]

1. It Probably Means The End Of Life As We Now Know It In The US

It will make the energy crises of the 70's seem like the good old days.

It will probably bring us a modern Depression, at best. Global Thermonuclear War, at worst.

[applegrove]

2. Rummy will never get the chance to, himself, drop a nuke the size

of a pineapple on some bunker in Iran. Let's hope nobody does.

[verse18]

3. "Mission Accomplished"n/t

[Strelnikov_]

4. "Talk of . . arming the Fouad Siniora government in Lebanon against Hezbollah"

Um, I bet this will end . . badly.

The real problem is a worldwide lack of leadership. There is hardly anyone around with the power or the vision to end the current state of international anarchy.

And we are leading the pack.

[eppur_se_muova]

5. Iranians are Arabs ?? News to me. nt