The New Cold War

WSJ ^ | 4-15-11 | BILL SPINDLE and MARGARET COKER

[Mozilla]

This new Middle East cold war comes complete with its own spy-versus-spy intrigues, disinformation campaigns, shadowy proxy forces, supercharged state rhetoric—and very high stakes.

"The cold war is a reality," says one senior Saudi official. "Iran is looking to expand its influence. This instability over the last few months means that we don't have the luxury of sitting back and watching events unfold."

On March 14, the Saudis rolled tanks and troops across a causeway into the island kingdom of Bahrain. The ruling family there, long a close Saudi ally, appealed for assistance in dealing with increasingly large protests.

Iran soon rattled its own sabers. Iranian parliamentarian Ruhollah Hosseinian urged the Islamic Republic to put its military forces on high alert, reported the website for Press TV, the state-run English-language news agency. "I believe that the Iranian government should not be reluctant to prepare the country's military forces at a time that Saudi Arabia has dispatched its troops to Bahrain," he was quoted as saying.

The intensified wrangling across the Persian—or, as the Saudis insist, the Arabian—Gulf has strained relations between the U.S. and important Arab allies, helped to push oil prices into triple digits and tempered U.S. support for some of the popular democracy movements in the Arab world.

Iran has long pursued a nuclear program that it insists is solely for the peaceful purpose of generating power, but which the U.S. and Saudi Arabia believe is really aimed at producing a nuclear weapon. The Saudis currently rely on the U.S. nuclear umbrella and on antimissile defense systems deployed throughout the Persian Gulf region. The defense systems are intended to intercept Iranian ballistic missiles that could be used to deliver nuclear warheads.

[AU72]

What Iran has been doing to the US for the last 30 years, a truly Great Power doing Old School push back would have vaporized the Mullahs in a fortnight and the whole world, after a couple of tut-tuts would have heaved a sigh of relief and moved on.

[Mozilla]

US has done nothing to stop Iran from using Nuclear Weapons against Israel, Saudi Arabia, and who ever else it wants.

[odds]

Amazing how incompetence on the part of some has the effect of making another look competent. 32 yrs & counting...

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Mozilla.

"The cold war is a reality," says one senior Saudi official. "Iran is looking to expand its influence. This instability over the last few months means that we don't have the luxury of sitting back and watching events unfold."

It's the hot wars everyone needs to worry about -- the Saudis are losing to Iran, an eventuality that should be of concern to everyone. OTOH, if Zero were NOT the president, and we the people had the votes in Congress as well, we'd be drilling our way out of the current crisis, as well as the future crises that threaten the future of world civilization. Then it would be our pleasure to let the Iranians overrun the Arab states -- at a very high cost to themselves thanks to us.