Free Republic

It's a fair bet that few around the Thanksgiving dinner table talked much about Dubai last week, even as that Emirate quietly rocked world financial markets with the surprise prospect of the biggest government debt default since Argentina's back in 2001. Unfortunately, by the time Americans break out the holiday eggnog, we may all be a lot more familiar with the tiny city-state on the Persian Gulf. For if ever there was a poster-child for commercial real estate excess, it is Dubai -- land of indoor ski slopes, man-made islands and home to what will soon be the tallest skyscraper...

For almost a decade, Arab regimes have worried about alleged Iranian plans to create a "Shiite crescent" from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, encompassing Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and a yet-to-be liberated Palestine. Now fresh fears have grown that the "crescent" may take another shape as well -- from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Aden, and including chunks of Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Since January, for instance, Iran has intensified pressure on Bahrain, where a Shiite majority has grievances against the Arab Sunni ruling elite. An archipelago connected with the Saudi mainland by a bridge, Bahrain provides the...