Failure to curb Iran's pursuit to acquire nuclear bomb will have its consequences

Iranian regime's push to acquire nuclear weapons during past 20 years would have gone unnoticed, if it wasn't for the main Iranian opposition to bring that to the light in 2002. For past 13 years the National Council of Resistance of Iran, NCRI and its supporters and operatives in Iran have gone in length to expose the menace of the Iranian regime. But instead the west naive approach towards Iran followed the appeasement policy emboldening the mullahs. This policy would no doubt lead to a more dangerous Middle East with other nations wanting to follow the nuclear path. The former Saudi foreign minister said that whatever the Iranian regime gets, we would pursue as well. That is why, according to an article in the Sunday Times, the Saudis have made a "strategic decision" to acquire "off-the-shelf" nuclear weapons from Pakistan. 

Senior US officials say that Sunni Arab states are increasingly concerned of the repercussions of a deal currently being negotiated between world powers and Shi'ite rival Iran, which they fear may still be able to develop a nuclear bomb.

The deal being negotiated between Iran and the permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany would see the Shi'ite nation curb its sensitive nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

"For the Saudis the moment has come," a former US defense official told the Sunday Times last week.

"There has been a long-standing agreement in place with the Pakistanis and the House of Saud has now made the strategic decision to move forward."

'This stuff is available to them off the shelf'

Another US official working in intelligence told the paper that "hundreds of people at CIA headquarters in Langley" were working to establish whether Islamabad had already supplied the Gulf nation with nuclear technology or weaponry.

"We know this stuff is available to them off the shelf," the intelligence official said, adding that it "has to be the assumption" that the Saudis have decided to become a nuclear power. 

"We can't sit back and be nowhere as Iran is allowed to retain much of its capability and amass its research," an Arab leader preparing to meet Obama told the New York Times on Monday (11 May).

The sentiment was shared by former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal, who told a recent conference in South Korea: "whatever the Iranians have, we will have, too."

The right to enrich uranium

If inked the deal will leave 5,000 centrifuges and a research and development program in place — features that are highly contested by Israel and Arab states.

By allowing Iran to retain the right to enrich uranium, the deal may inadvertently increase nuclear proliferation in the region, by providing justification for other Middle Eastern countries to match Iran. 

Saudi Arabia has financed substantial amounts of Islamabad's nuclear program over the past three decades, providing Pakistan's government with billions of dollars of subsidized oil while taking delivery of Shaheen mobile ballistic missiles.

"Given their close relations and close military links, it's long been assumed that if the Saudis wanted, they would call in a commitment, moral or otherwise, for Pakistan to supply them immediately with nuclear warheads," former Foreign Secretary Lord David Owen told the Sunday Times. 

A senior British military officer also told the paper that Western military leaders "all assume the Saudis have made the decision to go nuclear."

"The fear is that other Middle Eastern powers — Turkey and Egypt — may feel compelled to do the same and we will see a new, even more dangerous, arms race."

A startling report on Monday revealed that during a gang clashes in a small Texas town of Waco, a few hundred motorcyclists clashed which resulted in at least 9 death and dozens of injured. Just imagine if a similar clash occurs with terrorist gangs having some kind of nuclear weapons, receive from the Iranian regime, the godfather of terrorism. That scenario is unimaginable with catastrophic consciences.

The current strategy the Obama administration pursues with Iran leaves one worrying about such scenario. The only way to assure that this would never happen anywhere in the world is to deny nuclear bomb to the godfather of all terrorist, the mullahs' regime ruling Iran.    

Gulf States no longer trust US leadership, with good reason

USpresident's hopes to mend relations with the Persian Gulf Arab States this last week by inviting the heads of the GCC countries to Washington and Camp David failed to bear fruit despite his administration's efforts to pretend that it did. The absence of four heads of States, particularly the Saudi King Salman showed that it has gone beyond just a simple attempt of persuading deeply doubtful leaders of the actual intent of the current US administration to thaw severed relations with the most recognized state sponsor of terrorism in the region.

Honorable Lord Maginnis of Drumglass wrote an article in The Hill clearly bringing to the attention the failure of Obama's policies in the MiddleEast in betting on a losing horse.

The Iranian regime is struggling to survive through a number of domestic and international challenges. Internally the dissent among the public has intensified. Just this last week the weakened mullahs' regime, among other crisis in the country, faced a people's uprisings in the west of the country by the Kurdish minority, which has not subsided yet and the aftermath of this crisis is continuing to date.

Externally, Iran is struggling with backlashes and defeats in Syria from the Syrian opposition forces, in Yemen, by the forces of the newly formed Arab coalition. In addition collapse of the economic situation in Iran has brought the regime to a total suffocation point.

Lord Maginnis says in his article that the White House made a strong effort to downplay the apparent diplomatic snub that is Saudi King Salman’s decision not to attend this week’s Washington summit with Gulf Cooperation Council leaders. The Obama administration has indicated that they do not regard it as a snub and do not believe that the decision is in response to any substantive difference of opinion.

But it becomes harder to maintain such denials when one considers that the king of Saudi Arabia is not the only regional head of state who has declined the invitation to the summit.

This surely reflects the general status of relations between the current US leadership and the Gulf States as a whole. Although still technically allies of the U.S. those countries don’t seem to take American friendship as seriously as they did under prior administrations. Neither do they put as much faith in U.S. leadership in the region.

This was clearly evidenced by Operation Decisive Storm, the Saudi-led bombing campaign against the Iran-backed rebels in Yemen. That operation coincided with the formation of an Arab defensive coalition largely focused on homegrown opposition to the expansion of Iranian influence in the region.

The message in this is clear. It is the same message that has been expressed by Israel through its opposition to the emerging Iran nuclear deal and in Israeli strikes on Iranian forces and proxies in and around the Golan Heights: the U.S. cannot be trusted to take action, so its allies must go it alone.

On one hand, this may be exactly what the Obama administration wanted. This may be the president’s notion of leading from behind and wielding soft power through regional partners. But there is a serious problem with this. The U.S. is not leading at all. Quite the contrary, we are in danger of losing strategically important footholds in the Middle East as our relationships become strained and weakened with traditional allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Contrary to the Obama administration’s denials, there are enormous differences between the U.S. and its allies on substantive issues of global policy. What’s worse is that the administration is perceived as not only disagreeing with the Gulf States’ but also actively working against the policies that those nations consider safeguards to their security.

Last month, Tony Badran of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies said pointedly that the United States had been “siding with Iran” in the Yemen conflict. Although the U.S. Navy did reportedly deflect an Iranian arms shipment intended for the Houthi rebels, this hardly makes up for the fact that the Obama administration has welcomed an Iranian role in whatever political solution might be reached there. Nor does it make up for the fact that the administration opposed Operation Decisive Storm from the beginning, and reportedly exerted pressure on Riyadh to bring it to an end.

The question that arises from all of this is why should the Gulf States listen to a U.S. administration whose Middle East policy includes the stated goal of making Iran a “very successful regional power”?

I leave it up to the Obama administration to attempt to come up with a plausible answer to that question. But in the meantime I would emphasize that the attendance list for this week’s summit strongly implies that the Gulf States are disinclined to listen to U.S. input at this time. And that is dangerous to the future of American security, authority, and power.

And of course the Gulf States are worth listening to because they know something the Obama administration apparently does not. They know that the aggression demonstrated by the Iranian regime in Yemen and Syria and elsewhere is part and parcel of that regime’s identity. Deference from the world community will only enable the further expression of that identity, to say nothing of the influx of cash that would come from the nuclear deal that is due June 30. 

As Maryam Rajavi, the Paris based President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran testified recently before the US Congress recently “the Iranian regime has served as the main source of this ominous phenomenon in the region and across the world,” and “experience shows that in the absence of a firm policy vis-à-vis Tehran regime, there will be destructive consequences.”

The current policy of rapprochement with Iran is a threat to traditional U.S. allies in the Middle East; it is a threat to U.S. relations with those allies; and consequently it is a threat to the security of U.S. interests in the region and beyond.

Worse still, the current U.S. policy is a threat to the people of Iran, in that it promises to preserve the life of a regime that might otherwise be overwhelmed by the fervent desire for regime change among its people. By preserving the Iranian regime’s influence beyond its borders, the Obama administration is preserving the regime itself and all the human rights abuses and extremist ideologies that come with it.

 Current policy puts the U.S. on the wrong side of history – more so because it puts us on the side opposite our own allies and the advocates for human rights and democracy in Iran. In its naivety, the Obama administration appears to believe that it can preserve relations with old allies as well as being nice with Iran. But as the pan-Arab daily newspaper Asharq Al Awsat pointed out recently that close relations with both Iran and the Gulf States is an impossibility.

Obama must choose one or the other. Whether or not that is his intention, his perceived attitude will be interpreted not only by minor delegates from Gulf States who attended last week’s summit, but also by those who simply cannot afford to ignore the immediate risks on their borders that emanates from the reality Iran’s continuing aggressive ambitions.