WW, yours is an astute comment, concise, accurate and with a healthy appreciation for reality. I find it interesting that with easy access to EIA (Energy Information Admin.) data that some people ‘in the know’ still can’t get their facts straight or be bothered with a little research.

Fnord, the Sunni/Gulf oil states are threatened by Iran, by its 30-year shiite islamic revolution, by it's natural drive toward regional hegemony, by it's strategic need for a nuclear deterrent against nuclear armed opponents.

If you replay the last 40 years, Israel's threat of going nuclear in 1973 tore off the 'nuclear opacity' shroud, and blackmailed the US into guaranteeing their continued occupations, thru conventional arms superiority. It also ensured that eventually, Egypt, Arabia and Turkey, to name a few, would demand parity, thru nuclear arms acquisition, or Israeli N-disarmament.

In the 70's of my youth, when US oil peaked, the Shah's Iran was Israel's development partner for both IRBM's and nuclear fuel production, and a Soviet missile sub in Alexandria was the Soviet response to Arab-Israeli brinksmanship. Times change, but the problems remain.

Rolling it forward a few moves, to 2020, a fuel-producing Iran will see Arabia bringing home their own Bomb-4-allah, built under contract in Pakistan, and force other proliferations (Turkey, Egypt...) that change the game beyond my feeble ability to prognosticate. There really are major consequences, huge inertia, to how the 60 year old ME proliferation game plays out. While the Israel-US-Saudi diplo-military threats are framed dishonestly (missile shield for Europe???), Iran is equally 'opaque' and trending totalitarian.

This is the middle, not the beginning or end. It's only mostly about the oil/gas, and part of that is the hands of Russian chess players.

I meant 'momentum', where I used 'inertia' above.

DB, Sunni Arabs overtly exposing Israel's nuclear proliferation IS new, at least in a formal diplomatic context. Thx for the cites, I'll take a closer look.

But don't assume that diplomatic exposure of Israel's expanding N-arms and missile capability will automatically mean that peace and truth will prevail. An attempt to enforce US counterproliferation laws and embargoes on Israel would be hugely divisive here, not likely to succeed. It would disrupt any Palestine negotiations in the kerfuffle.

Just a year ago, a Saudi prince-with-portfolio was threatening major full-cycle nuclearization steps, if the Israelis abandoned 'opacity', declared their N-arms, as some ultra-right-wingers were advocating. It clearly indicated a Saudi desire that they not do so, giving me pause to wonder what was going on.

In my embryonic understanding of orthodox moslem political thought, believers are the deity's chosen, his vanguard, and so how could He desire for them to be undefended against nuclear armed non-moslem invaders? In that case, it's the believer's duty to get busy and re-establish dominance within the realm, and parity with infidel rivals. King Abdullah would need atomics for Jordan, to discharge his hereditary duty as protector of the holy sites.

It's not hard to see that the US-Israeli threats against Iran as being supported by The Kingdom and other Gulf potentates. "The Strong Horse" thesis includes a corollary, that Israel often functions as a proxy for the Saudi agenda.

Strange bedfellows, unintended consequences, and all that.

I feel confident that the Gulf Sunni oligarchy sees Iranian nuclear development as a threat that must be dialed back, or matched with their neighborhood nuclear parity of the Sunni kind. Proliferation W. of the Gulf is the greater strategic threat to an Israeli nuclear monopoly. Stopping the program E. of the Gulf promises Team Obama some hope of getting the evil jinn back in the bottle.

If bankrupt/isolated Pyongyang can put together a Plutonium program, the clever Arabs and their IRPakistan allies can too. Any grand vizier to the Saudi King would need a nuclear option in his kit bag, or face replacement by someone who did. From a Sunni perspective, Babylon has fallen, and the takfir persians are inciting revolution among the Twelver gulf peasants

That doesn't make them smart or stupid, right or wrong. Just is. A case can be made that the Saudis came to fear Saddam's Iraq more than Israel, which has no designs on the Kingdom's territory. Now Jordan, they have to be wondering about crazy eretz maccabe rants claiming land E. of the river, and Tyrtaois tells me that some lay claim to the headwaters in the North.

Arabia, Israeli and US leaders all have their areas of myth belief and strategic blindness. As do you, and I, and Ahmedinijad. But belief in the gospel of the peaceful atom? That's just silly.

Insisting that there is minimal strategic or military motivation underlying nuclear power generation and fuel production in the Gulf context- that strikes me as a classic example of strategic blindness.

The strategic threat to Israel from Iranian centrifuges is that it demands symmetry from Arabia, since Iraq can no longer be counted on as a blocking force against Islamic Revolution.

I don't disagree that the strategic cascade, the drive for nuclear deterrence, runs thru Dimona. But the Gulf has it's own logic, power centers, and imbalance in terms of Sunni (wahabi even) dominance of local Shiite majorities.

The imbalance of nuclear threats without sovereign nuclear deterrence exists in a larger, multi-polar context. In time, Turkey will want to demonstrate it's sovereign power, and Egypt has a right to defend the Suez. On it goes, badly for Israel.

It's no accident that Russian fueling of Bushehr is immune from the Saudi oil weapon. What's Arabia going to do, run up the price on Iranian and Russian energy exports? Drive oil prices down, creating a glut of refined POL product for Iran?

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/31/nuclear-power-games.html

Israeli regional nuclear overkill certainly is the elephant in the room, not the embroyonic Iranian program, however that is viewed by Gulf Sunni states.

There is some question as to Israel's regional monopoly. The 2005-ish Saudi statement that they have no nukes on the Arabian peninsula is a model of opacity and non-denial.

I'm open to evidence that the large Saudi IRBM purchase from China was part of the Kingdom's response to Israeli nukes, along with their funding (and one presumes part ownership) of the Chinese-enabled IRPakistan N-arsenal. That 1987 missile purchase aprox. dovetails with miniaturized IRP nukes going operational. But it also matches up against Iranians lobbing missiles across the Gulf in the Tanker war, and the possible loss of Basra.

As a matter of protecting their constitutional turf, our Congress should demand an NIE assessment of the Israeli nuclear doctrine and activities, and how those affect/interact with US interests. Since one purpose of Isreali nuclear strategy is to leverage US ME/oil policy, it is a proper (one might say necessary) subject for public Congressional and voter debate. Without informed debate, democracy is a sham.

Don, as you know, Iran has been overtly and publicly threatened by two nuclear powers who have demonstrated an active willingness to gamble on a conventional military attacks. Iran is roughly in the position of Pyonyang, relative to the US superpower, but without N-deterrent. We'd have already overthrown their revolution, if we knew how to do it economically.

I really don't mean to make this personal, but if you lack the imagination to see the relative value to Khameini's Iran of a strategic military deterrent, vs economic electrical power generation, I can't help you. Doubting the zionist narrative doesn't mean that I'm blind to the strategic implications of Iran's actions and position.

The large conventional arms sales in the Gulf since 2003 is a matter of public record, as is the traffic there of N-proliferation material. Google it yourself. No one imagines that Israel is going to attack the UAE,Yemen or Kuwait. Getting sucked into US-Israeli adventures against Iran is a possibility for the Gulf states.

If Arabia saw Israel as an existential enemy, they wouldn't be toying with providing Israeli AF routes thru their world-class air defense radar umbrella, which is about the only way an Israeli attack could work. An attack order over Obama's signature seems unlikely, but then there is the Bay of Pigs and Gulf of Tonkin to remember, under Democratic liberal admins.

Hey rocket scientist- the Gulf states are made up mostly of SHIA Muslims, the leadership is Sunni- and look, the Sunnis and Shia seem to get along JUST FINE, without the wonderful CPA blunders..... Get your facts straight before posting such ridiculous information! Oh, wait, we invaded a whole country based on BS information, poured kerosene on the fire by setting up a government based on religion sect and race, hired terrorist to run that government (mostly very strongly associated with Hezbollah) and then wondered what went wrong....

At least that's what I've read, along with the factoid of majority Shiite populations in the Gulf.

Just because Kuwait and UAE are prospering today, it doesn't follow that hereditary 'royal' Sunni elites are unconcerned by the winds of populist Shiite islamic revolution. Lebanon also used to be a fun Sunni playground, and now an Iranian armed Hez is a force to reckon with. Contemporary Arab culture-war analyses ("The Strong Horse", for one) are full of concern about the effects of rapid erosion of the Sunni political dominance paradigm.

Things weren't all that sunny between Iraqi Shiite and Sunni in the southern/gulf end of the country, pre 2003. The Badr Brigade, Dawa assassination conspiracies, generations of Sadr ayatollahs being murdered, destruction of the Marsh Arabs. Sectarian-tribal war flared on the Yemen-Arabia border this year. Lots of Sunni-Shiite troubles among the Arabs.

My reading indicates that the Saudis are truly paranoid about Iran, and that their focus on possible internal Shiite insurgency in the oil region made them strategically blind to a growing threat of their own jihad cult, even after a number of major attacks. Maybe Israel is making the whole 'fear nuclear shiite revolution' thing up, but I don't think the US is clever enough to steer Arab opinion.

Look, the population there is what it is, some mixed, some locally segregated, mostly quiet, occasionally at violent odds. It's the tension and imbalance that opens the door to suppression and insurrection, not the absolute numbers, if known. If the Saudi's are suppressing Shiite practice, then the count is suspect, and they also understand that secret practice breeds secret politics and disloyalties.

The point is that in focusing on Israel, you've discounted the Arab perception of an Iranian political and threat to a degree that seems to approach faith-based strategic blindness. The wahabi Saudis have put a lot of money into a defensive posture against Iran over the years. Iranian-Arab antagonism has cost upwards of a half-million lives in the last generation, no small thing.

The AQ jihadi cultists take a very strong position against Shiite practice in greater Arabia, and Shiite political resurgence in Iraq, using takfiri-inspired violence against Shiites as a path to insurrection, which they hope will advance their cause. "Eclipse of the Sunnis" is another recent analysis that proposes a paradigmatic shift is taking place that is unnacceptable to the old guard and the many AQ sympathizers.

In a climate of fear and mistrust, Arab perceptions may trump the facts re the Iranian nuke program. I'm agin a new attack, another tar baby, for moral and practical reasons. But ignoring Arabian motives for supporting what we see here as a fundamentally zionist project makes it more likely, not less so.

Nuclear Iran will be as much of a threat to global peace as a Nuclear Israel, Nuclear Pakistan, Nuclear China, Nuclear India, Nuclear UK, Nuclear France, Nuclear Russia and a Nuclear USA. Nothing more or nothing less. If world can live with so many nuclear states, it can live with one more also.

several more ,i.e. Saudi King Abdullah is now going to go ahead with a nuclear plant and research complex in Riyadh.

If Iran further acquires a nuclear device, so will the enchanted Kingdom. If Iran produces a bomb with a deliverable system, so will the Saudis - make book on it. Oh, and Egypt also announced they will begin construction of a nuclear power plant at al-Dabah, and again, if they feel the Saudis need a bomb - they'll get that war fuzzy feeling about aquiring one also.

Tytaois, you leave unsaid that if the Kingdom thinks Iran MIGHT get a bomb, and the U-enrichment progress being logged by inspections is consistent with that path, then they have to minimize their window of vulnerability by having a program to bring IT home from Pakistan by that date uncertain. All that oil to protect, and all that money to protect it with. Iran would assume that the nasty wahabis would assume and take action, so the righteous Twelvers have to chart a path to neighborhood nuclear parity with Arabs who otherwise would beat them there.

So by this WW run of the nuclear march-countermarch game, ME nuclear (and then) weapons proliferation is a logical consequence of a path that leads from Natanz and Pakistan, back thru Dimona to White Sands. (Deity of choice) bless the 'chile that got his own...

Team USA and the Likudniks can try to sell the proposition that no way will we let this deal go down, but by the logic of the game, nuclear sovereignty is a prudent and affordable move for Riyadh. Maybe PM Netanyahu's lack of histrionics over Bushehr means he's been read in on a fait accompli, and is praying for the serenity to accept what he cannot change.

Kaching all you like, you still miss the lay of the rest of the field. Or do your best to seem to.

It's the capability that Iran is building, with capacity in mind downstream. If they achieve the ability to produce 100 units, which room the first 10 units are kept in is immaterial. The threat of capability and capacity will drive Arabia to reciprocate, with strategic consequences for Israel.