Careful What You Wish For
Posted by Keith_Indy on 25 Jun 2007 at 1:40 pm | Tagged as: Keith's Page, Foreign affairs
Michael Totten has some interesting thoughts on the changing state of affairs in the Middle East. Well worth the read.
Arab governments are finally taking notice that the Islamist radicals they have been tolerating, appeasing – and sometimes even nurturing – are clear and present dangers to them. Their winking and subtle support for Israel during last summer’s war with Hezbollah may have been explainable by the Sunni-Shia conflict, but their sudden fear and loathing of Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, cannot be.
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Apparently none of the Arab governments, except the one in Syria, ever expected or even wanted Hamas to dominate Palestine or even defeat Israel. (Hamas could not do the latter without first doing the former.)
Arab regimes have been playing appeasement games of their own to keep the radicals busy fuming at somebody else.
You could even argue that the Syrian regime has been appeasing Islamists, that support from Damascus is really just a life-insurance policy so the Islamists don’t gun for the Baath Party as they did before Hafez Assad flattened large parts of the Sunni city of Hama. Bashar Assad’s regime is overwhelmingly Alawite. They belong to an extremely deviant and heretical branch of Twelver Shiism that is no longer really even Islamic. The Alawites probably figure that have no choice but to ride the Islamist tiger so they won’t be eaten. Assad also, quite cleverly I must say, whips up Islamists to deter the U.S. and Israel from terminating his regime. No one wants to see the Hamasification of Syria after the departure of the Assads.
I don’t expect most Arab governments to wise up and follow the lead of Jordan’s King Abdullah and forge an actual alliance with Israel any time soon. Some, none more than Syria’s, have gone too far to turn back.
But if Lebanon falls, and if Iran gets nuclear weapons, and if maniacs wearing ski masks take over Iraq after the U.S. withdraws, most of them will eventually figure out who their real enemies are. What’s happening to Abbas, Seniora, and Maliki can happen to any and all of them, even Assad.
The fact that Arab governments threaten to build nuclear arsenals to counter Iran’s, but not Israel’s, all by itself tells you who and what they’re really afraid of. Blowback isn’t just for Americans anymore.
UPDATE:
Iraq the Model ponders why Sadr is now saying that Iran is supporting al Qaeda…
In our last post at ITM we briefly mentioned a statement in which Sadr’s office accused Iran of hosting and assisting al-Qaeda, today I’ll talk about that statement in more detail.
The claim itself is not strange. What’s strange is whom it came from. Sadr was the last voice we’d expect to say such a thing. Accusing Iran of interfering in Iraq’s affairs is one thing, but accusing it of hosting and assisting al-Qeada is a whole new ballgame. It opens the door for speculation and analysis, especially since Sadr only weeks ago returned from a long stay in Iran in which he was a guest of the top leaders of the Islamic Republic. So why make this statement now?
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