Time's Battleland: Would Assad’s Fall Limit the Nuclear Menace in the Middle East?

As Bashar Assad looks more internationally isolated by the day — and far more vulnerable to Western economic sanctions than uber-bad boy Iran — it behooves us to think through what general advantages accrue with his eventual fall. To date, most of the thinking has focused on Iran’s loss of its right-hand proxy in transmitting terror to Israel via Hamas and Hezbollah.

Read the entire post at Time's Battleland blog.

Comments

[Michael]

Her matrix needs a third dimension: effective unity of action vs effective disunity. Meaning, does the central government have an effective monopoly on foreign policy or not? In Saudi's case, you have some wealthy players (including, until recently, Osama Bin Ladin) who have no qualms about supporting, or even engaging in, asymmetric warfare against nations they don't like; call them an effective, oppositional subaltern faction within the larger nation.