Vanguard News Network

U.S. Diplomats Forecast Nuclear Arms Race in Middle East if Iran Gets the Bomb
Wednesday, April 02, 2008

WASHINGTON —

Saudi Arabia most likely would develop nuclear weapons if Iran acquires them, according to a report to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

High-level American diplomats in Riyadh with excellent access to Saudi decision-makers said an Iranian nuclear weapon frightens the Saudis “to their core” and would compel the Saudis to seek nuclear weapons, the report said. The American diplomats were not identified.

Turkey also would come under pressure to follow suit if Iran builds nuclear weapons in the next decade, said the report prepared by a committee staff member after interviewing hundreds of individuals in Washington and the Middle East last July through December.

While Turkey and Iran do not see themselves as adversaries, Turkey believes a power balance between them is the primary reason for a peaceful relationship, the report said.

Egypt most likely would choose not to respond by pursuing its own nuclear weapons program, said the report prepared in late February and obtained Wednesday. The impact on relations with Israel and the United States were cited as the primary reasons.

A U.S. intelligence estimate late last year said Iran worked on nuclear weapons programs until 2003 before abandoning them. However, the intelligence analysts also reported Iran was continuing to enrich uranium, a key weapons component, and possessed the capacity to produce nuclear weapons if it decided to do so.

Sen. Richard G. Lugar, R-Ind., the senior Republican on the committee, directed staff member Bradley Bowman to conduct the study.

Among its conclusions, the report said demands for nuclear energy and for matching Iran’s nuclear progress virtually guarantees that three or four Middle Eastern countries will generate nuclear power by 2025.

And this, in turn, will reduce the obstacles to acquiring nuclear weapons, the report said.

The spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East could reduce regional security and endanger U.S. interests, the report said.

In the next two or three years, the United States must take steps to restore Arab and Turkish confidence in U.S. security guarantees, the report concluded.

Otherwise, it said, “the future Middle East landscape may include a number of nuclear-armed or nuclear weapons-capable states vying for influence in a notoriously unstable region.

CANADIAN JEWISH COLUMNIST ERICH MARGOLIS SAYS “BUSH GETS IT RIGHT” ON THE SITUATION IN WHICH HE CALLS “KOSOVA.” AREN’T ALL THESE JEWS “HISTORICALLY” SUPPOSED TO BE “GREAT” FRIENDS OF THE SERBS? THINK AGAIN…….

February 24, 2008

Bush gets it right
U.S. knows a nation when it sees one

By ERIC MARGOLIS

The Bush administration has lurched for so long from one foreign policy disaster to another, we almost have forgotten what it’s like to see the United States do the right thing.

But we did last week.

After decades of oppression and struggle, the two million Albanians of the former Yugoslav/Serb province of Kosovo finally achieved their long-sought independence. This was the final welcome act in the death of the abortive state, Yugoslavia.

The U.S. was the first major power to recognize the new Republic of Kosova — as it should henceforth be called. There were almost as many American flags in the streets of its capital, Prishtina, as Albanian ones. President George W. Bush deserves a hearty salute.

The U.S. had once more rescued the Albanians. In 1918, victorious Serbia was about to annex tiny Albania to gain its deep-water Adriatic ports. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson ordered Serbia back, saving Albania.

After communist demagogue Slobodan Milosevic sought to build a Greater Serbia in the 1990s through ethnic terrorism, Washington forced NATO to halt Serb genocide in Bosnia.

In 1999, while Europe watched impotently, Milosevic’s forces killed 13,000 Kosovar Albanians, blew up mosques, gang-raped Muslim women, burned Albanian villages and drove one million Albanian Kosovars into frigid winter fields where they would have died of exposure without outside help. The U.S. saved the Kosovars by launching a short air war on the Serbs.

Outraged Serbs claimed they were victims of an American-German conspiracy. Kosovo was their historical medieval heartland, they insisted. Serbia’s very soul. But by 2008, Kosova’s population was two million Albanians and only 60,000-80,000 Serbs and gypsies, mostly in the Mitrovica enclave. About 100,000 more Kosovo Serbs had moved to Serbia.

Historical claims are often of questionable value. Kosovo was indeed the heartland of medieval Serbia after Serb tribes invaded the region in the 6th Century AD. But the original inhabitants were Illyrians — ancestors of today’s Albanians.

ETHNIC CLEANSING

Serbs sought to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of Albanians three times: In the 1911-12 Balkan Wars after they seized it from the Ottoman Empire; in 1945; and in the 1990s. This brutal record, and persecution of Albanian Kosovars in the post-Tito era, invalidates any legitimate claims Serbia has to Kosovo.

Wounded pride aside, Serbia is better off without Kosova. History teaches it’s often counterproductive to try to retain by force a region that wants out (the U.S. Civil War is a major exception).

Serbs, an intelligent, talented people, became international pariahs after the demagogue Milosevic intoxicated them with Nazi-style bogus historical mythology, primitive nationalism, and anti-Muslim racism. Serbia’s future lies in the European Union, not in dubious medieval mythical glories.

America once again saved Albanians from extinction.

By contrast, it was noteworthy that Romania refused to join Britain, France, Germany and Italy in recognizing the new Kosova republic.

That’s because Romania also has its own dirty secret. The post-First World War Treaty of Trianon was every bit as evil and immoral as the 1938 Munich Pact. At Trianon, the victorious allies handed over 66% of the Hungarian people to Romania, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. Romania got the lion’s share, including Transylvania. Hungarians want freedom from Romania.

DIVIDED PEOPLES

Albanians also were divided between Albania proper, and Yugoslavia’s provinces of Kosovo and Macedonia. So Albanians and Hungarians remain Europe’s divided peoples.

But there is no hint free Kosova will join neighbouring Albania anytime soon. The Kosovar leadership, under able PM Hasim Tachi, rejects any talk of union; so does Albania’s capable prime minister, Dr. Sali Berisha. Kosovars are not eager to merge with impoverished, struggling Albania; they want to be in the EU.

It certainly is a tonic seeing people abroad joyously waving American flags and blessing the U.S. This is what my America used to be about.

I pray that under new presidential leadership, the U.S.A. will resume this honourable tradition as liberator and defender of human rights.

Where did you hear that [about Metzger]??

I wondered if he was dead also since he forgot to upload last month’s radio show.