Betting the Goatherd on Nuclear Chic in the Middle East. Potentates and Their Dangling Nukes. Is Israel Pulling a Saddam?
On Nukes, goatherds, brains, and money:On the shores of my native Gulf, perhaps we can now call it the Persian-American-Nuclear Gulf (or we may add +French to its name): the oligarchies and potentates are tripping over themselves trying to go nuclear, or to look like they are going nuclear…
Gone are the early complaints in their media about the dangers of accidents at reactors. That was before they started talking about going nuclear, that was when only the mullahs in Iran were going nuclear. Israel doesn’t count, it has gone nuclear for some years now, at least they have managed to be coy enough about it to convince the Arabs and most of the world that they have, which is as good as having it- n’est-ce pas? (it would be funny if the Israelis have been pulling a Saddam on the Arabs all these years).
A nuclear program has three important prerequisites: money, brains, and access to materials (which enough money will presumably buy). Let us leave out the materials, the necessary chemical elements all ending in -ium out for now.
The Israelis have the brains and apparently the money, at least they know where to get the money. The Iranians apparently have the brains, or enough of it, and the money aussi.
As for les Arabes, the Arab states, they face a nuclear dilemma: they have either one or the other, or none, of the requisites. None of them have all. They are especially short on the ‘brains’ factor. (‘brains’ here means what is upstairs as well as needed scientists, discipline and organization, and resisting the temptation to appoint scions of potentates and oligarchs to run the programs- which can be very dangerous).
The Egyptians have some of the brains, although almost certainly not enough. The Gulf GCC states have all the money they need for it but not the brains (ditto for the Saudis). They can get nuclear power by buying it, as the recent deals agreed to with Western powers seem to indicate. I bet the zbeidi and the hamoor will some day come out with two heads in the warm waters of my native Gulf. The Jordanians have neither the money nor the brains (the same applies to Yemenis, Sudanese, and Somalis- although those Arabs have not yet declared their nuclear intentions).
Nuclear power (for peaceful purposes of course) cannot be decreed by royal decree, nor can it be obtained by doing a nuclear prayer or a nuclear dance. Well, maybe Joe Stalin, old seminarian and old atheist that he was, did some intensive prayer and some dancing after Truman showed the ace up his sleeve over Japan. But cool is cool just as hip is hip, and now every potentate wants his own pair of nukes dangling betwixt…..
Cheers
mhg
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