Possibility of a Nuclear-Armed Iran Alarms Arabs

CAIRO — As the West raises the pressure on Iran over its nuclear program, Arab governments, especially the small, oil-rich nations in the Persian Gulf, are growing increasingly anxious. But they are concerned not only with the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran but also with the more immediate threat that Iran will destabilize the region if the West presses too hard, according to diplomats, regional analysts and former government officials.

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“I think the gulf states are well advised now to develop strategies on the assumption that Iran is about to become a nuclear power,” said Abdul Khaleq Abdullah, a political science professor at United Arab Emirates University. “It’s a whole new ballgame. Iran is forcing everyone in the region now into an arms race.”

This realization, in turn, is raising new anxieties and shaking old assumptions.

Writing in the pan-Arab newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi, for instance, the editor, Abdel-Beri Atwan, said that with recent developments “the Arab regimes, and the gulf ones in particular, will find themselves part of a new alliance against Iran alongside Israel.”

The head of a prominent research center in Dubai said that it might even be better if the West — or Israel — staged a military strike on Iran, rather than letting it emerge as a nuclear power. That kind of talk from Arabs was nearly unheard of before the revelation of the second enrichment plant, and while still rare, it reflects growing alarm.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/world/middleeast/01arabs.html?_r=1&ref=middleeast

regardless what one think tank and a few people think. That is certainly not representative of the overwhelming majority of Arab people.

I live in the Middle East most of the year and have for close to half my life. I talk about this with people all the time. There is absolutely no popular support whatsoever for a military strike. The consequences would just be too devastating.

There is far more alarm among the vast, overwhelming majority of Arab people about the possibility of devastating war that would wreck the Gulf - completely end any possibility of a stabilized Iraq and throw the entire region into total chaos.

In fact, in spite of much mutual fear and loathing, most Arab governments have friendly relations with Iran and a great deal of mutual trade. Iranian produce fills the super markets all across the Gulf states, several flights a day connect cities throughout the Arab world with numerous Iranian cities and hundreds of thousands of Gulf Arabs and other Arabs work, travel and live in Iran as hundreds of thousands of Iranians, work, travel and live in the Arab world.

They have plenty of mutual fear and loathing, but certainly no desire for war. They do have a desire for defused tensions, better relations and more trade.

Iran would retaliate against the U.S. presence in the Gulf. For the U.S. to continue such an attack and to make the attack at least technically successful, this would require forcing the Gulf states into granting rights to air space and facilities. Thus making the Gulf states and their oil fields, refineries, infrastructure and transport network targets of devastating Iranian retaliation. Although Iran does not have particularly sophisticated weaponry, they do have a vast array of relatively unsophisticated medium range missiles positioned in hostile and unapproachable terrain and quite capable of causing enormous and crippling damage very rapidly and choking off the Straits of Hormuz.

Any attack by either the United States or Israel on Iran would have a catastrophic effect on the world's oil supply thus sending oil prices into the stratosphere way beyond anything currently imaginable thus making the current global economic collapse lead inevitably into a massive worldwide depression of catastrophic proportions.

Who, other than KSA and the Gulf States, does the NYT think paid for Pakistan's nuclear program?