Arab spring has left U.S.’ regional allies nervous
U.S. military commanders have warned their Israeli counterparts that any action against Iran would severely limit the ability of American forces in the region to mount their own operations against the Iranian nuclear programme by cutting off vital logistical support from Gulf Arab allies.
U.S. naval, air and ground forces are dependent for bases, refuelling and supplies on Gulf Arab rulers who are deeply concerned about the progress Iran has made in its nuclear programme, but also about the rising challenge to their regimes posed by the Arab spring and the galvanising impact on popular unrest of an Israeli attack on Iran.
The U.S. Fifth Fleet is headquartered in Bahrain and the U.S. Air Force has major bases in Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. Senior U.S. officers believe the one case in which they could not rely fully on those bases for military operations against Iranian installations would be if Israel acted first.
“The Gulf states’ one great fear is Iran going nuclear. The other is a regional war that would destabilise them,” said a source in the region. “They might support a massive war against Iran, but they know they are not going to get that, and they know a limited strike is not worth it, as it will not destroy the programme and only make Iran angrier.” Israeli leaders had hinted they might take military action to set back the Iranian programme, but that threat receded in September when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the United Nations General Assembly that Iran’s advances in uranium enrichment would only breach Israel’s “red line” in spring or summer next year.
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said this week in London that it was the Iranian decision this year to convert a third of the country’s stock of 20-per-cent-enriched uranium into fuel (making it harder to convert to weapons grade material if Iran decided to make a weapon) that had bought another “eight to ten months”.
Mr. Barak’s comments, made in London, appear to signal that Israel’s new red line is an Iranian stockpile of about 200kg of 20-per-cent-enriched uranium in convertible form, enough if enriched further to make one bomb. Western diplomats argue the benchmark is arbitrary, as it would take Iran another few months to enrich the stockpile to 90 per cent (weapons grade) purity, and then perhaps another year to develop a warhead small enough to put on a missile. Even then Tehran would have just one nuclear bomb, hardly enough to make it a nuclear weapons power.
A new round of international talks with Iran are due after the U.S. presidential elections, in which Tehran is expected to be offered sanctions relief in return for an end to 20-per-cent enrichment.
The U.K. government has told the U.S. it could not rely on the use of British bases in Ascension Island, Cyprus, and Diego Garcia for an assault on Iran as pre-emptive action would be illegal.
The Arab Spring has also complicated U.S. contingency planning for any new conflict in the Gulf. U.S. naval commanders have watched with unease as newly elected Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi has made overtures towards Iran. U.S. ships make 200 transits a year through the Suez Canal. Manama, the Fifth Fleet headquarters, is the capital of a country that is 70-per-cent Shia and currently in turmoil.
Ami Ayalon, a former chief of the Israeli Navy and the country’s internal intelligence service, Shin Bet, argues Israel too cannot ignore the new Arab realities.
“We live in a new Middle East where the street has become stronger and the leaders are weaker,” Mr. Ayalon told The Guardian. “In order for Israel to face Iran we will have to form a coalition of relatively pragmatic regimes in the region, and the only way to create that coalition is to show progress on the Israel-Palestinian track.” — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2012
Keywords: Arab spring, Israel-Iran row, Iran nuke programme
@ Davis K. Thanjan it was Israel a rogue state in the middle east.Iran is the only shia state.it needed to secure its borders not only from the americans and also from other Sunni states,Arab league,Israel, pakistan terror(pak is Sunni state) and afghan terror.US, Britain and all the EU members are in a pathetic state if they don't control themselves they have to go in the Greek way.Israel not only has very little to contribute to the US economy and even to the rest of the world.
UN generously gave Jews a place to live in Palestine after they were being kicked out from Europe and called Israel now they are planning to conquer whole of Palestine by kicking out Palestinians out from their home land.no body liked the idea.if you don't support Israel you are an anti-semitic,if you were against them you are a racist.so Europeans do not know what to do and they are blinking.
@ Davis K. Thanjan: There is only one problem if Israel, as you say,
takes unilateral military action against Iranian nuclear therat. Iran
will yet be able to hit back massively to "wipe off the tiny bit of
illegal settlement" that is Israel, and in turn, touching off anything
close to an Armeggedon. Iran, to be sure, is neither a rogue state nor a
banana republic. It is neither after nukes nor poses any genuine threat.
The shia-sunni divide is nothing new, only its foreign exploitation is.
It appears that the US has abandoned Israel in favour of the Persian Gulf countries such as Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE and Quatar. Protection of these small countries is vital to quench the US thirst for oil where as Israel has very little to contribute to the US economy. The mutual defense treaty between the US and Israel will be thrown in the wind, if hostilities errupt between Israel and Iran, if Obama wins the US presidential election. Britain is also washing the hands off saying that their bases in Cypress, Ascention Islands and Diego Garcia are not reliable in case of hostilities between Israel and Iran. Israel has to take unilateral military action against Iranian nuclear threat, though the Iranian nuclear threat is more applicable to the small Sunni Moslem countries in the Persian Gulf area both because of ideological differences with Shia government of Iran and vulnarability for Iranian military strikes across the Persian Gulf without going through a third country.
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