The General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency last week passed a resolution urging Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as her neighbors all have. But Obama has refused to even acknowledge that Israel has nuclear weapons. He was asked about this at his first presidential news conference by Helen Thomas -- if he knew of any country in the Mideast that had nuclear weapons, an obvious reference to Israel. Obama responded that he didn't want to 'speculate.'More of the same from Helena Cobban. Read the links too.
Israel and Saudi Arabia are the rogue states of the Mideast. They reinforce each other out of desperation and the US supports both out of a mixture of ideology and short-sighted assumptions of self-interest. In our relations with Israel add guilt, easy moralism, moral cowardice and blackmail. And the Saudi kingdom is still the major source of funding for Al Qaeda.
I think Saudi Arabia is a rogue state is the same sense as Vatican is a rogue state; that is: not really a state at all, but rather an entity representing a religious authority.
ReplyDeleteTheir mission is to guard two holy sites there and facilitate hadj for the believers. It's just that by unfortunate accident there happened to be a lot of oil under ground there and that's the cause of all the troubles.