Developing detente in the ME

ARTICLE: Iran and Israel Already at (Cold) War, By Frida Ghitis, World Politics Review, 21 Jan 2010

Nice overview of the Cold War-ish tit-for-tatting going on between Israel and Iran. The dynamic fits very nicely with my projected trajectory of seeing the region's nuclear powers (eventually Iran plus Turkey plus Saudi Arabia joining Israel) head toward a detente-like strategic talks agenda.

After some learning curve incidents sure to spook us plenty.

Comments

[Fun Joel]

Tom, I'm curious your thoughts on this, since I was thinking about it the other day...

Is there one country in the Muslim world that if they were to make peace with Israel, most of the others would fall in line and follow suit? Saudi Arabia? Iran?

[Javaid.a@ntlworld.com]

If a fair deal passesd between the Palestinians and Israelis then most Arabs would re-focus quickly back towards the inequities they endure themselves and forget Israel.No country has the power to overcome that simple maths simply by making a separate peace .Saudi Arabia , the seeming leader of the pack, fears for its own existence and is'nt going to be offering any 'out-of-box' thinking.Its too busy shoring itself up to be spend too much time being a leader on Palestinian question.

[stuart abrams]

Since Israel has nukes, in reality, there are no Muslim countries that are at war with Israel. There hasn't been state-on-state warfare between Israel and any Muslim country since 1973, when Israel made it pretty clear that it was prepared to use its nukes and it thereby locked in a guarantee of massive conventional military superiority from the US. Not surprisingly, peace followed. The Palestinians are analogous to the Ulster Catholics. They are an isolated group left out of this peace program, and until they are integrated into the Core, they will stay that way.