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Written by Marat
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Monday, 23 January 2006 |
In the race to apocalypse, presidents Ahmadi-nejad and Bush may see their dream of the return of the mahdi/messiah dashed if we see more Shia convergence as postulated below…
“Just consider what the policies would be likely to be of an independent sovereign Iraq. If it's more or less democratic, it'll have a Shiite majority. They will naturally want to improve their linkages with Iran, Shiite Iran. Most of the clerics come from Iran. The Badr Brigade, which basically runs the South, is trained in Iran. They have close and sensible economic relationships which are going to increase. So you get an Iraqi/Iran loose alliance. Furthermore, right across the border in Saudi Arabia, there's a Shiite population which has been bitterly oppressed by the U.S.-backed fundamentalist tyranny. And any moves toward independence in Iraq are surely going to stimulate them, it's already happening. That happens to be where most of Saudi Arabian oil is. Okay, so you can just imagine the ultimate nightmare in Washington: a loose Shiite alliance controlling most of the world's oil, independent of Washington and probably turning toward the East, where China and others are eager to make relationships with them, and are already doing it. Is that even conceivable? The U.S. would go to nuclear war before allowing that, as things now stand.”
But remember, it is not the Shia Islamic Republic that usually goes on the offensive – unlike many others in the region the former Persia is happy with its territorial and cultural integrity, and it is not Tehran pursuing a hypocritical agenda regarding nuclear proliferation.
“It is not right, by any civilised norms, to impose imperial-style ideas on a sovereign state – and especially on a country which has historically been a stabilising and civilising force in the highly sensitive Persian Gulf region.”*
Washington, London, can you countenance this? A Shia axis in whatever form is merely the politicisation of its popularity in most countries in the region, as well as Iran/Iraq. But whether such talk is even relevant – certain issues such as the resistance in Palestine go beyond Shia/Sunni terms – despotic Sunni leaderships are likely to get even more Western support. They are the chosen ones securing energy supply. A shift in that support or, even better, further national/international recognition of the actual diversity of the Middle East nations – the great Iraq experiment excepted – seem distant prospects at the moment.
(*Tehran is very sensitive about the Gulf being suffixed with “Persian” though) |
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 25 January 2006 )
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