"You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria."
-Henry A. Kissinger
Well, it seems that Egypt's making war fine all by itself and I'll be surprised if Syria finds peace anytime soon.
I'm not gonna lie, my personal experience with the Middle East is pretty limited. I've never actually been there. The closest I've ever been would be Kashmir and Rajasthan in India. I got to meet a lot of very cool Muslims but I can't say it gave me a huge amount of insight into the larger conflicts occurring between and within the countries there. But who am I to let my ignorance get in the way of me spouting opinions?
Essentially, I'm having difficulty figuring out why US President Obama is so gun-ho to throw some Tomahawk missiles at Syria from his destroyers in the Mediterranean. As Syria has not threatened or attacked the US or any of its allies, this attack would make Obama a war criminal by the Nuremberg Standard if the UN Security Council does not sanction it. Not to say that Assad's forces haven't done some terrible things. They have. At least 100,000 people have been killed since the civil war broke out in 2011, most of them killed by the Syrian military. At least two million have fled and another four million are internally displaced.
The sarin gas attack that occurred in Damascus on August 21st and killed as many as 1429 people is horrible for sure. No one is doubting that. However, Obama's desired response of shooting some missiles to assist the rebels and 'send a message' is a worrying one considering that Russia and China are quite opposed to any attack that has not been sanctioned by the UN. China seems mostly against it due to the damage it would do the world's economy and since it would drive up the price of oil. Russia is more tightly linked with Syria as they do a lot of trade and the navel facility in Syria at Tartus is Russia's only Mediterranean port. Russia has threatened to send a missile shield into Syria if the US attacks without UN backing. It has also been made clear that Russia and China will veto any action from the UN Security Council. They learned from Libya that the West will not take their interests in the area seriously if allowed to militarily intervene.
Before attacking Syria and potentially starting a WWIII-style showdown with Russia and China becomes a viable option, it seems like two questions have to be answered. First, was it actually Assad's regime that was responsible for the gas attack? Second, is this an intelligent and effective response if it was?
For the first question, there are a few theories. One is that Assad, or rogue elements of his government, chose to use chemical weapons against a civilian location in the hopes of killing the opposing rebels hiding there. This is the main narrative being shouted by the US and agreed upon by the European Union even while they state that any aggression should wait for the United Nations inspectors report. The main problem with this one is motive. As Ed Husain of the Council of Foreign Relations had written, "Al Assad has no credible motivation to use these weapons at this stage, and in this phase of the conflict. He is not losing." It's hard to imagine why Assad would cross Obama's 'red line' regarding chemical weapons when he was winning, when UN inspectors were actually present in the country, and when doing so would involve the Americans.
The second theory is that it was the Syrian rebels. They certainly have the motive to use the weapons, blame Assad, and force the US to join on their side of the civil war. Like the Syrian government, the rebels have done some atrocious things in this fight as seen in the video of a rebel commander who cut out a dead Syrian soldier's heart and ate it. A large amount of the rebel opposition are Islamic extremist groups who oppose Syria's secular regime. The Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra are two of these with the later openly demanding that Syria become an Islamic state under Sharia law. It's hard to imagine wanting these groups to take over power in Syria either. Dale Gavlak, an independent journalist who has done work for Associated Press, has reported that rebels have said they had gotten the sarin gas from Saudi Arabia and then mishandled it, causing the accident. Saudi Arabia has made its desire to overthrow the Assad regime clear in the past. Neither Russia or Syria have provided any evidence that the rebels were responsible.
A third theory was put forward by retired US Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Colin Powell during the Bush administration. He said the evidence that Assad used the chemical weapons was "flaky" and that it could have been the rebels or even Israel who used it in order to draw in the US. Certainly, Israel supports removing Assad due to his close relation with Iran and his material support of Hezbollah who were able to fight Israel out of Southern Lebanon in 2006. This is just idle speculation but something worth thinking about if only because there is an actual motive.
As to who it actually was, I'm having as much trouble figuring this out as everyone else it seems. Assad has said his regime is innocent. Obama and US Secretary of State John Kerry certainly believes it was him. White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough says a "common-sense test" dictates that it was him although also says they don't have "irrefutable, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence." As of yet, however, it seems all of the evidence is circumstantial or classified. The US says they possess satellite imagery showing attack preparations and transcripts of Syrian forces detailing the attack plans but refuse to disclose any of them. Essentially all the the US is saying is that the attack was too big and coordinated to be the rebels. Even the actual estimate that Obama put forward of 1429 deaths in the attack is controversial. The Western-supported Syrian National Coalition was only able to provide a list of 395 deaths, many of them only mentioned by first name or as relative to another name.
Honestly, it's hard to imagine that the US has any evidence at all. Leading up to the Iraq War, evidence was at least created fraudulently and presented to get UN support. Now though, people are a little more wary of the country who cried WMD. The evidence would be closely examined so it seems safer for the Obama administration to simply say it has it rather than faking it. Obviously, any real evidence would have been presented already.
Now the second question, is limited missile strikes on Syrian forces an effective and logical response? Well, both the rebels and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have agreed that the missile strikes would do nothing. There might be a few civilian casualties and possibly a couple military personal dead but nothing would change. It's already been made clear that the weapons can't target chemical weapons sites since that would possibly release them. Not even mentioning that Tomahawk cruise missiles aren't free and thus should probably be used wisely.
Although Obama pushed heavily for military intervention in Syria immediately following the gas attack, a majority of American people are against any attack of Syria even if it turns out Assad was responsible. Obama, the constitutional scholar, was kind enough to remember the Constitution's separation of power and turn a vote to go to war over to Congress who is supposed to hold that authority. Considering the lack of support for attacking amongst the US public, it seems unlikely that Congress will go along with it, what with their entire House of Representatives and a third of their Senate up for reelection in 2014.
Really, few supporters of attacking can be found outside of the country either. The UK's parliament voted against supporting the US in any attack, much to the dismay of Prime Minister David Cameron who wanted in on the action. French President Francois Hollande had quickly planned to join the attack but as only 36% of his people support the idea, he's now wanting to wait for the UN inspectors report before doing anything. In Canada, Harper supports military intervention but acknowledges we can and will contribute nothing. Turkey's Tayyip Erdogan also supports action but considering his government's crackdown on peaceful protestors in recent days, he is hardly an ideal source of moral support. Saudi Arabia and Israel are really the only other supporters but they have been openly against Assad for too long to be considered unbiased in this case.
So why is Obama so desperate to get rid of Assad? Until this gas attack, the US had been happy just supporting and funding the rebels. The support to use the actual US military to attack isn't there and he should have known that before talking about 'red lines' and how 'Assad must go.' Why was Obama willing to gamble on this and hope he could force another Middle Eastern war on the American people who are getting pretty weary of them?
Retired General Wesley Clark puts forward one explanation. According to him, in December after 9/11, the decision was made in the pentagon to go to war with Iraq although he wasn't told why and no evidence linking them to Al-Qaeda had come up. Soon, the plan had expanded and he read a memo from the Secretary of Defense's office that said "we were gonna take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and then finishing off, Iran." Considering Eisenhower warned the US about the excessive power of the "military-industrial complex," it seems possible that the pentagon may be bullying Obama into using his political capital to attack these oil rich, strategically important countries and ensure that they wind up with either puppet governments or fractured ones too weak to be sovereign.
Certainly an interesting idea that seems to make sense from what we've seen but is there any truth to it? Dr. Nafeez Ahmed over at The Guardian has done an excellent piece pulling apart the 2008 US Military-funded RAND report, Unfolding the Future of the Long War, which can be found here.
Due to laziness, I'll just steal a few choice quotes from Ahmed's piece:
"The economies of the industrialized states will continue to rely heavily on oil, thus making it a strategically important resource."
"The geographic area of proven oil reserves coincides with the power base of much of the Salafi-jihadist network. This creates a linkage between oil supplies and the long war that is not easily broken or simply characterized... For the foreseeable future, world oil production growth and total output will be dominated by Persian Gulf resources... The region will therefore remain a strategic priority, and this priority will interact strongly with that of prosecuting the long war."
"Divide and Rule focuses on exploiting fault lines between the various Salafi-jihadist groups to turn them against each other and dissipate their energy on internal conflicts. This strategy relies heavily on covert action, information operations (IO), unconventional warfare, and support to indigenous security forces... the United States and its local allies could use the nationalist jihadists to launch proxy IO campaigns to discredit the transnational jihadists in the eyes of the local populace... US leaders could also choose to capitalize on the 'Sustained Shia-Sunni Conflict' trajectory by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes against Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world.... possibly supporting authoritative Sunni governments against a continuingly hostile Iran."
Also interesting is that the British were preparing to attack Syria in 2009, two years before the civil war that erupted in 2011. French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas stated on French television that "I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business. I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain, not in America. Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria."
This seems like it may have been the result of a proposed oil pipeline to Europe that Assad refused in the same year. Qatar was hoping to run a pipeline from their North field through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey and into Europe, purposefully skipping Russia. Syria rejected this to protect Russia's role as Europe's top supplier of natural gas. Instead, Assad negotiated a pipeline that would go from Iran into Iraq and Syria and then into Europe by ship. This would allow Iran and Iraq to supply the European market while bypassing Turkey which is likely the main reason Turkey vehemently supports regime change in Syria. This "Islamic Gas Pipeline" would be a very profitable enterprise for Iran which is probably a big part of why the Western powers are so anxious for Assad to be replaced. Isolating Iran has become the name of the game. Turkey is part of NATO and no ally of Iran meaning Europe and the US would prefer their money goes to Saudi Arabia and Qatar via Turkey instead of to Iran and Iraq via Syria.
Saudi Arabia also took this change of plans badly and Prince Bandar would meet with Vladimir Putin to try to get him to onto their side and to stop protecting Assad. Their leaked transcripts would have Prince Bandar trying to form an alliance between Russia and OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries). Prince Bandar also promised to protect Russia's naval base in Syria if Assad falls. However, if Putin refused to cooperate, Prince Bandar threatened Russia's Olympics with Chechen terrorist attacks while saying that there would be "no escape from the military option." Putin did refuse and it seems like Obama is hoping to fulfill Prince Bandar's promise.
So, in an anti-climatic turn of events, it seems likely that Western involvement in the Middle East is once again about oil instead of humanitarian reasons. Fortunately, since Obama's blustering on the issue has failed to raise a coalition of the willing at home or abroad, a diplomatic solution has been created that allows Obama to save face. John Kerry, replying to a question of whether an attack could be avoided, said “Sure, he could turn over every bit of his weapons to the international community within the next week, without delay. But he isn’t about to.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia was "willing to engage" with this idea and would try to get Syria to hand over the chemical weapons. The US had discussed this idea before but thought it was not possible as they felt they could not trust Assad to not simply hide weapons and use the disarmament time to further entrench. Apparently Kerry “still feels it is not possible” to arrange this transaction so it's possible the US is not intending to take this solution seriously and this talking is just the logical result of Kerry not wanting to seem too vicious by having said that there was nothing Syria could do to avoid being attacked. However, whether or not the US is serious on this, a potential escape hatch has opened that allows the US to claim a victory while not having to go through with a war that no one supported.
Of course, if the oil conflict theory is correct, it'll likely only be a temporary reprieve unless Assad stops supporting the pipeline from Iran and agrees to the one from Qatar.
Interesting to remember that the West's closest ally in the Middle East after Israel are Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia and Qatar consist of primarily orthodox Sunni Muslims with about 40% of those in Saudi Arabia being Salafiyya, derogatorily know as Wahhabi, the most intolerant sect of Islam which makes up the majority of radical Islamic fundamentalists. Iran on the other hand is almost entirely Shi'ite and leans towards the secular. Which country did fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers come from again?
An eventual peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians would have the added benefit of allowing the rift between Iran and the West to heal. This would allow us to start purchasing oil from Middle Eastern countries that don't have large Wahhabi movements that disproportionately produce West-hating radicals.
Oil makes for strange bedfellows.
AS
-Henry A. Kissinger
Well, it seems that Egypt's making war fine all by itself and I'll be surprised if Syria finds peace anytime soon.
I'm not gonna lie, my personal experience with the Middle East is pretty limited. I've never actually been there. The closest I've ever been would be Kashmir and Rajasthan in India. I got to meet a lot of very cool Muslims but I can't say it gave me a huge amount of insight into the larger conflicts occurring between and within the countries there. But who am I to let my ignorance get in the way of me spouting opinions?
Essentially, I'm having difficulty figuring out why US President Obama is so gun-ho to throw some Tomahawk missiles at Syria from his destroyers in the Mediterranean. As Syria has not threatened or attacked the US or any of its allies, this attack would make Obama a war criminal by the Nuremberg Standard if the UN Security Council does not sanction it. Not to say that Assad's forces haven't done some terrible things. They have. At least 100,000 people have been killed since the civil war broke out in 2011, most of them killed by the Syrian military. At least two million have fled and another four million are internally displaced.
The sarin gas attack that occurred in Damascus on August 21st and killed as many as 1429 people is horrible for sure. No one is doubting that. However, Obama's desired response of shooting some missiles to assist the rebels and 'send a message' is a worrying one considering that Russia and China are quite opposed to any attack that has not been sanctioned by the UN. China seems mostly against it due to the damage it would do the world's economy and since it would drive up the price of oil. Russia is more tightly linked with Syria as they do a lot of trade and the navel facility in Syria at Tartus is Russia's only Mediterranean port. Russia has threatened to send a missile shield into Syria if the US attacks without UN backing. It has also been made clear that Russia and China will veto any action from the UN Security Council. They learned from Libya that the West will not take their interests in the area seriously if allowed to militarily intervene.
Before attacking Syria and potentially starting a WWIII-style showdown with Russia and China becomes a viable option, it seems like two questions have to be answered. First, was it actually Assad's regime that was responsible for the gas attack? Second, is this an intelligent and effective response if it was?
For the first question, there are a few theories. One is that Assad, or rogue elements of his government, chose to use chemical weapons against a civilian location in the hopes of killing the opposing rebels hiding there. This is the main narrative being shouted by the US and agreed upon by the European Union even while they state that any aggression should wait for the United Nations inspectors report. The main problem with this one is motive. As Ed Husain of the Council of Foreign Relations had written, "Al Assad has no credible motivation to use these weapons at this stage, and in this phase of the conflict. He is not losing." It's hard to imagine why Assad would cross Obama's 'red line' regarding chemical weapons when he was winning, when UN inspectors were actually present in the country, and when doing so would involve the Americans.
The second theory is that it was the Syrian rebels. They certainly have the motive to use the weapons, blame Assad, and force the US to join on their side of the civil war. Like the Syrian government, the rebels have done some atrocious things in this fight as seen in the video of a rebel commander who cut out a dead Syrian soldier's heart and ate it. A large amount of the rebel opposition are Islamic extremist groups who oppose Syria's secular regime. The Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra are two of these with the later openly demanding that Syria become an Islamic state under Sharia law. It's hard to imagine wanting these groups to take over power in Syria either. Dale Gavlak, an independent journalist who has done work for Associated Press, has reported that rebels have said they had gotten the sarin gas from Saudi Arabia and then mishandled it, causing the accident. Saudi Arabia has made its desire to overthrow the Assad regime clear in the past. Neither Russia or Syria have provided any evidence that the rebels were responsible.
A third theory was put forward by retired US Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Colin Powell during the Bush administration. He said the evidence that Assad used the chemical weapons was "flaky" and that it could have been the rebels or even Israel who used it in order to draw in the US. Certainly, Israel supports removing Assad due to his close relation with Iran and his material support of Hezbollah who were able to fight Israel out of Southern Lebanon in 2006. This is just idle speculation but something worth thinking about if only because there is an actual motive.
As to who it actually was, I'm having as much trouble figuring this out as everyone else it seems. Assad has said his regime is innocent. Obama and US Secretary of State John Kerry certainly believes it was him. White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough says a "common-sense test" dictates that it was him although also says they don't have "irrefutable, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence." As of yet, however, it seems all of the evidence is circumstantial or classified. The US says they possess satellite imagery showing attack preparations and transcripts of Syrian forces detailing the attack plans but refuse to disclose any of them. Essentially all the the US is saying is that the attack was too big and coordinated to be the rebels. Even the actual estimate that Obama put forward of 1429 deaths in the attack is controversial. The Western-supported Syrian National Coalition was only able to provide a list of 395 deaths, many of them only mentioned by first name or as relative to another name.
Honestly, it's hard to imagine that the US has any evidence at all. Leading up to the Iraq War, evidence was at least created fraudulently and presented to get UN support. Now though, people are a little more wary of the country who cried WMD. The evidence would be closely examined so it seems safer for the Obama administration to simply say it has it rather than faking it. Obviously, any real evidence would have been presented already.
Now the second question, is limited missile strikes on Syrian forces an effective and logical response? Well, both the rebels and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have agreed that the missile strikes would do nothing. There might be a few civilian casualties and possibly a couple military personal dead but nothing would change. It's already been made clear that the weapons can't target chemical weapons sites since that would possibly release them. Not even mentioning that Tomahawk cruise missiles aren't free and thus should probably be used wisely.
Although Obama pushed heavily for military intervention in Syria immediately following the gas attack, a majority of American people are against any attack of Syria even if it turns out Assad was responsible. Obama, the constitutional scholar, was kind enough to remember the Constitution's separation of power and turn a vote to go to war over to Congress who is supposed to hold that authority. Considering the lack of support for attacking amongst the US public, it seems unlikely that Congress will go along with it, what with their entire House of Representatives and a third of their Senate up for reelection in 2014.
Really, few supporters of attacking can be found outside of the country either. The UK's parliament voted against supporting the US in any attack, much to the dismay of Prime Minister David Cameron who wanted in on the action. French President Francois Hollande had quickly planned to join the attack but as only 36% of his people support the idea, he's now wanting to wait for the UN inspectors report before doing anything. In Canada, Harper supports military intervention but acknowledges we can and will contribute nothing. Turkey's Tayyip Erdogan also supports action but considering his government's crackdown on peaceful protestors in recent days, he is hardly an ideal source of moral support. Saudi Arabia and Israel are really the only other supporters but they have been openly against Assad for too long to be considered unbiased in this case.
So why is Obama so desperate to get rid of Assad? Until this gas attack, the US had been happy just supporting and funding the rebels. The support to use the actual US military to attack isn't there and he should have known that before talking about 'red lines' and how 'Assad must go.' Why was Obama willing to gamble on this and hope he could force another Middle Eastern war on the American people who are getting pretty weary of them?
Retired General Wesley Clark puts forward one explanation. According to him, in December after 9/11, the decision was made in the pentagon to go to war with Iraq although he wasn't told why and no evidence linking them to Al-Qaeda had come up. Soon, the plan had expanded and he read a memo from the Secretary of Defense's office that said "we were gonna take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and then finishing off, Iran." Considering Eisenhower warned the US about the excessive power of the "military-industrial complex," it seems possible that the pentagon may be bullying Obama into using his political capital to attack these oil rich, strategically important countries and ensure that they wind up with either puppet governments or fractured ones too weak to be sovereign.
Certainly an interesting idea that seems to make sense from what we've seen but is there any truth to it? Dr. Nafeez Ahmed over at The Guardian has done an excellent piece pulling apart the 2008 US Military-funded RAND report, Unfolding the Future of the Long War, which can be found here.
Due to laziness, I'll just steal a few choice quotes from Ahmed's piece:
"The economies of the industrialized states will continue to rely heavily on oil, thus making it a strategically important resource."
"The geographic area of proven oil reserves coincides with the power base of much of the Salafi-jihadist network. This creates a linkage between oil supplies and the long war that is not easily broken or simply characterized... For the foreseeable future, world oil production growth and total output will be dominated by Persian Gulf resources... The region will therefore remain a strategic priority, and this priority will interact strongly with that of prosecuting the long war."
"Divide and Rule focuses on exploiting fault lines between the various Salafi-jihadist groups to turn them against each other and dissipate their energy on internal conflicts. This strategy relies heavily on covert action, information operations (IO), unconventional warfare, and support to indigenous security forces... the United States and its local allies could use the nationalist jihadists to launch proxy IO campaigns to discredit the transnational jihadists in the eyes of the local populace... US leaders could also choose to capitalize on the 'Sustained Shia-Sunni Conflict' trajectory by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes against Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world.... possibly supporting authoritative Sunni governments against a continuingly hostile Iran."
Also interesting is that the British were preparing to attack Syria in 2009, two years before the civil war that erupted in 2011. French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas stated on French television that "I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business. I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain, not in America. Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria."
This seems like it may have been the result of a proposed oil pipeline to Europe that Assad refused in the same year. Qatar was hoping to run a pipeline from their North field through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey and into Europe, purposefully skipping Russia. Syria rejected this to protect Russia's role as Europe's top supplier of natural gas. Instead, Assad negotiated a pipeline that would go from Iran into Iraq and Syria and then into Europe by ship. This would allow Iran and Iraq to supply the European market while bypassing Turkey which is likely the main reason Turkey vehemently supports regime change in Syria. This "Islamic Gas Pipeline" would be a very profitable enterprise for Iran which is probably a big part of why the Western powers are so anxious for Assad to be replaced. Isolating Iran has become the name of the game. Turkey is part of NATO and no ally of Iran meaning Europe and the US would prefer their money goes to Saudi Arabia and Qatar via Turkey instead of to Iran and Iraq via Syria.
Saudi Arabia also took this change of plans badly and Prince Bandar would meet with Vladimir Putin to try to get him to onto their side and to stop protecting Assad. Their leaked transcripts would have Prince Bandar trying to form an alliance between Russia and OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries). Prince Bandar also promised to protect Russia's naval base in Syria if Assad falls. However, if Putin refused to cooperate, Prince Bandar threatened Russia's Olympics with Chechen terrorist attacks while saying that there would be "no escape from the military option." Putin did refuse and it seems like Obama is hoping to fulfill Prince Bandar's promise.
So, in an anti-climatic turn of events, it seems likely that Western involvement in the Middle East is once again about oil instead of humanitarian reasons. Fortunately, since Obama's blustering on the issue has failed to raise a coalition of the willing at home or abroad, a diplomatic solution has been created that allows Obama to save face. John Kerry, replying to a question of whether an attack could be avoided, said “Sure, he could turn over every bit of his weapons to the international community within the next week, without delay. But he isn’t about to.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia was "willing to engage" with this idea and would try to get Syria to hand over the chemical weapons. The US had discussed this idea before but thought it was not possible as they felt they could not trust Assad to not simply hide weapons and use the disarmament time to further entrench. Apparently Kerry “still feels it is not possible” to arrange this transaction so it's possible the US is not intending to take this solution seriously and this talking is just the logical result of Kerry not wanting to seem too vicious by having said that there was nothing Syria could do to avoid being attacked. However, whether or not the US is serious on this, a potential escape hatch has opened that allows the US to claim a victory while not having to go through with a war that no one supported.
Of course, if the oil conflict theory is correct, it'll likely only be a temporary reprieve unless Assad stops supporting the pipeline from Iran and agrees to the one from Qatar.
Interesting to remember that the West's closest ally in the Middle East after Israel are Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia and Qatar consist of primarily orthodox Sunni Muslims with about 40% of those in Saudi Arabia being Salafiyya, derogatorily know as Wahhabi, the most intolerant sect of Islam which makes up the majority of radical Islamic fundamentalists. Iran on the other hand is almost entirely Shi'ite and leans towards the secular. Which country did fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers come from again?
An eventual peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians would have the added benefit of allowing the rift between Iran and the West to heal. This would allow us to start purchasing oil from Middle Eastern countries that don't have large Wahhabi movements that disproportionately produce West-hating radicals.
Oil makes for strange bedfellows.
AS
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