WILLIAM HAGUE, the Foreign Secretary, has warned of a new Cold War; this time emanating from within the Middle East if Iran manages to create a nuclear bomb.
It is the Foreign Secretary’s belief that other countries in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia, would seek to construct their own nuclear military capability. Then there is Turkey. She would not wish to remain outside of such a club, and would take the necessary measures to join it.
Mr Hague’s analysis will be taken notice of; but where the Cold War he describes for the Middle East would differ from the one the West was involved in for over 70 years, is over the participants readiness to use their weapons.
During the old Cold War, each side were driven by a political ideology, and would not have used their nuclear arsenals when push came to shove, as was shown with the Cuba crises.
If a nuclear conflict had come about it would have been through either accident or misunderstanding. For although both sides prepared for a nuclear confrontation by engaging in an arms race; neither side, I believe, would have been prepared to wipe out humanity for the sake of a political ideology. But each side had to convince the other that they would in order to defend either democracy and communism.
MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) was the acronym that caught the public imagination, as well as the politicians. But a front had to be kept up to convince the Soviets that the West meant business, and this paid off during the Cuban missile crisis of the early 1960s.
The Cuban crises convinced the Americans that the Soviets were not prepared to use their Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (IBMs) to defend their allies; but only if they were forced to by the West. That is, if the West moved against the Soviet Union on the plains of Europe and the Soviets faced defeat.
Of course, it is only with hindsight that I can make such an assumption. At the time, I as well as millions of others, were convinced that each side meant business, and the Cuban crises may have worked to the benefit of the West – but would the next confrontation?
On the whole, after Stalin’s death, the Soviet leadership were more pragmatic as even the fiery Khrushchev proved during the Cuban crises.
AS FAR AS THE Middle East is concerned; well, things look very different. A Cold War in the Middle East would be far more unstable than the one between the West and communism.
Where Mr Hague may prove to have been week in his analogy, is in not taking the one factor into consideration that makes a Cold War a real one in the Middle East, almost certain.
If Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey set about manufacturing nuclear weapons in response to the West’s cross-fingered approach to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, then the resultant stand-off promises greater instability than the earlier Cold War ever managed to manufacture – even taking into consideration the Cuban crises.
Israel is a nuclear power - although she does not admit to being such. Add the Jewish state into the mix, then the prospect of at some time a nuclear conflagration taking place in that part of the world seems almost certain.
When Syria attempted a nuclear programme, Israel bombed the facilities that Syria had created for the purpose; and to this day Syria has not attempted a reprise. But when it comes to Iran, Israel’s so-called allies have forbidden her to repeat her success with Syria against Iran. If three or four years ago Israel had been given the all clear for such a ‘Syrian’ mission, we would not be fearful today about a Cold War in the Middle East. But time has passed and Iran has put her nuclear capability beyond Israel’s reach without America’s help.
TODAY, INSTEAD OF POLITICAL IDEOLOGY driving the new Cold War, we will have religious faith driving the conflict: and under such a circumstance, I am afraid the international community’s failure to stop Iran manufacturing her nuclear capacity; will make any military conflict in that part of the world nuclear very quickly.
Because religion will be at the helm of any nuclear conflict; whatever the faith, be it Christian, Hebrew or Muslim. Those who believe in life after death…but not only believe, but are as convinced about their afterlife, as they are about the rising of the sun; then life or death matters little to such people: and in Iran we have such people.
We have Muslims tying explosive about their waists to die for their faith – communists never did this. Muslims are prepared to give themselves up to Allah at any time. By so doing they become martyrs for their faith. To such people death is just part of the journey and they believe it to be just that – a mere journey.
Israel cannot stop Iran now. She could have done at one time. But not with the censoring of her actions by America and the United Nations. Now, because of such dilatory and cowardly behaviour by the West and the UN, Iran is on the brink of nuclear nationhood and all that this will come to mean for the international community in the very near future.
Radical Islam is on the march in Iran; Iranian radical Islam cares little about the death of their perceived enemies and welcome their own martyrdom in the pursuance of their enemies death. If the Infidel is destroyed, then Allah will reward his martyrs in the afterlife. It matters little to such people whether their martyrdom, or their enemies defeat, is procured by the cross-bow or an atomic bomb.
No comments:
Post a Comment