Overlooked in the welter of fast-moving events throughout the Arab world was a Saudi Arabian call for transforming the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) into "an entity identical to the (27-nation) European Union" — plus nuclear weapons.
Saudi Arabia has grown impatient. "Waiting for Godot," Samuel Beckett's famous play, depicts the "meaninglessness of life," with its repetitive plot, where nothing much happens. In Saudi eyes, that's Iran and its secret nuclear weapons program. And eye-drop Western sanctions have done zip to deter Iran's aging theocrats.
Iran began nuclear research with French assistance in the 1960s. In 1972, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi told this reporter that Iran would one day be a nuclear power. Britain had relinquished all its geopolitical responsibilities east of Suez in 1968.
Under the Nixon Doctrine that followed the British withdrawal from the Persian Gulf, the Shahanshah ("King of Kings") became the "Guardian" (and gendarme) from the Strait of Hormuz to Kuwait.
No comments:
Post a Comment