Monday, October 13, 2008

Rumors of War: Israel and Iran

Well, the mob riots in Acre have subsided after four days, which is good. On the other hand we receive news (which seems reasonable) that Israel may well be planning a strike on Iran before the end of the Bush administration, which has been strongly supportive of Israel over the years.

The article is over at the UK site, TimesOnline. One section:

Some key decision makers in Israel fear that unless they attack Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities in the next few months, while George W Bush is still president, there will not be another period when they can rely on the United States as being anywhere near as supportive in the aftermath of a unilateral attack.

In the past 40 years there have been few occasions when I have been more concerned about a specific conflict escalating to involve, economically, the whole world. We are watching a disinformation exercise involving a number of intelligence services. Reality is becoming ever harder to disentangle. [...]

3 comments:

Odysseus said...

If you have spoken on it before, Abu Daoud, I have not been paying attention: What do you think about Israel and it's situation in the MIddle East? (Is that a whole blog post, or have you already blogged it? Feel free to refer me to something already written.)

Abu Daoud said...

Hi Rob,

I don't write too much on the topic of Israel, I probably post as much on Israel as I do on other countries in the region like Egypt, KSA, Lebanon, and so on.

In a word though, intractable. There is simply no political solution and the status quo is demographically impossible as well, if one thinks that Israel as a Jewish state should continue to exist. Jewish birthrates in Israel are low, Arab Muslim birthrates are quite high. The population in the W Bank and Gaza are growing quickly.

The so-called two state solution is stupid. It would, within months, devolve into total war because a significant portion of Palestinian Muslim Arabs will not be happy with only parts of the land.

Meanwhile Arab Christians continue to emigrate and the gov't has little appreciation for Christians or Christianity. Good question though.

Odysseus said...

Thanks!