Islam, Terror and the Second Nuclear Age

NYT Magazine ^ | October 29, 2006 | Noah Feldman

[Ready4Freddy]

I.

For nearly 50 years, worries about a nuclear Middle East centered on Israel. Arab leaders resented the fact that Israel was the only atomic power in the region, a resentment heightened by America’s tacit approval of the situation. But they were also pretty certain that Israel (which has never explicitly acknowledged having nuclear weapons) would not drop the bomb except as a very last resort. That is why Egypt and Syria were unafraid to attack Israel during the October 1973 Yom Kippur War. “Israel will not be the first country in the region to use nuclear weapons,” went the Israelis’ coy formula. “Nor will it be the second.”

Today the nuclear game in the region has changed. When the Arab League’s secretary general, Amr Moussa, called for “a Middle East free of nuclear weapons” this past May, it wasn’t Israel that prompted his remarks. He was worried about Iran, whose self-declared ambition to become a nuclear power has been steadily approaching realization.

The anti-Israel statements of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, coupled with Iran’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas, might lead you to think that the Arab states would welcome Iran’s nuclear program. After all, the call to wipe the Zionist regime from the map is a longstanding cliché of Arab nationalist rhetoric. But the interests of Shiite non-Arab Iran do not always coincide with those of Arab leaders. A nuclear Iran means, at the very least, a realignment of power dynamics in the Persian Gulf. It could potentially mean much more: a historic shift in the position of the long-subordinated Shiite minority relative to the power and prestige of the Sunni majority, which traditionally dominated the Muslim world...

[Ready4Freddy]

"The prospect of not just one Islamic bomb, but many, inevitably concentrates the mind on how Muslims — whether Shiite or Sunni — might use their nuclear weapons. In the mid-1980’s, when Pakistan became the first Islamic state to go nuclear, it was still possible to avoid asking the awkward question of whether there was something distinctive about Islamic belief or practice that made possession of nuclear technology especially worrisome."

[Ready4Freddy]

ping

[American in Singapore]

... how Muslims — whether Shiite or Sunni — might use their nuclear weapons.

Hopefully against themselves.

[American in Singapore]

And wouldn't a Nuclear Winter offset Global Warming?

It could be a winning strategy: Muslims blowing each other up with nukes, causing a Nuclear Winter, which offsets the effects of Global Warming!

Al Gore, Al Gore, wherefore art thou, Al Gore?

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

PING!

A good read. I'm not sure I agree with the author's conclusion about Islam, however.

[Taxman]

Between today and the election, on each WoT or Iraq thread I encounter, I will respond thusly:

I urge all Americans to purchase and read Mark Steyn's new book:

America Alone; The End of the World as We Know It.

Then go vote!

In fact, buy two, and give one to someone who thinks Islam is the "Religion of Piece" or does not quite understand what the "Religion of Peace" adherents intend to do to Western Civilization.

After reading Steyn's book, there will be no doubt as to what those bastards have in mind for us!

[I will not give the ending away -- you'll have to read the book!]