Iran has fingers, more than the total on two hands, here and there and everywhere. Before going on, I would like to clarify that I am not criticizing Iran's activity as much as I am the impotence of Arab states. I hope that Iran is lying and that it is trying to seek nuclear weapons, as long as Israel has them. Further, I hope that the Arabs awake from their hibernation, which has lasted so long that “beds resemble graves,” as Ibrahim Yaziji once said. Iran has an alliance with Syria (to stand up to the Bush administration and its policy of regime change, which is therefore justified). It sponsors Hizbullah, and was behind a group of Hizbullah operatives, Egyptians and Palestinians who tried to contact Shiite groups in Morocco, Egypt and Sudan. It also has Shiite parties in Iraq, while the leading religious authority Ali Sistani remains independent. It has influence in Pakistan and Afghanistan, an alliance with Venezuela, a presence in South America, and trade and religious ties with mosques in the US. It is negotiating with the G-6 over its nuclear program; it promises and pledges, then retreats, as it likes. After Egypt raised the issue of Iran's reaching its borders through the Islamic Republic's relations with Hamas, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia raised the issue of Tehran's support for the Houthi rebels in Yemen and via the Saudi border. The regime in Iran is doing all of this and is accused of tampering with the recent presidential elections. It faces terror from various sources within the country, and President Ahmadinejad is accused of being anti-Semitic for consistently denying the Holocaust, as if he is the one being accused of committing it. He has political rivals and enemies within the clerical institution, which wants to oust him. He heads a repressive regime that jails and threatens opponents. His big oil country has plunged into a gasoline crisis, along with inflation and a shortage of basic foodstuffs. With all of this, the country is under siege; there are sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council and it is facing the possibility of a new round of sanctions, which the Americans promise this time will be crippling, or destructive, and as bad as those placed on Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait. Where do the Arabs stand in all of this? If a reader could discover the cave in which they are sleeping, I hope that this helps us. What I know is that Iran is having a field day, and the only country in the region that is trying to confront it is Israel, namely the only state that has nothing to fear from the regime of the Ayatollas in Tehran, and nonetheless, it sends the charlatan Shimon Peres to precede Ahmadinejad to Brazil. Israel claims that Iran has a military nuclear program, which is a boldfaced lie. Even if Iran had the intention to produce nuclear weapons, it does not have the ability now, nor will it in one year, or five. I do not know anything secret here, and am not revealing anything new. During the negotiations with Iran over recent years, and especially after the meetings in Geneva and then Vienna, and the understandings reached by both sides, with Iran then trying to escape from them, all of the information said that Iran was producing 5 percent enriched uranium and needed to reach 19.75 percent in order to operate a simple reactor, which is concerned with medical experiments, like the one near Tehran. The information held that a nuclear bomb would need at least 90 percent enriched uranium, which is impossible for Iran now via any known reactor, such as the one near Qom, or one that is secret and unfinished. In other words, Israel convinced itself of its lie. Even if we go beyond the western-based information itself and assume that Iran has produced a nuclear bomb, or ten, Israel possesses between 100 and 200 of the weapons, along with farther-reaching, more precise and more powerful missiles that outnumber those in Iran. Moreover, the US supports Israel. If a country is going to be wiped off the map, it will be Iran and not Israel. Other information, which is also available to Arab regimes, if they read, says that Iran is offering the Obama administration its help in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and especially in Iraq, and with Hizbullah in Iran, in return for dividing up influence in the Middle East with Washington, and at the expense of our Arab countries. This reminds me of the New Testament tale about the crucifixion of Christ. He saw the Roman soldiers gambling to divide his clothes, and left us the expression, “casting lots over Jesus' clothes.” Iran is gambling over its clothes with America, and with others, and with us…or perhaps I should say “with you” and be content with my British nationality, denying my Arab roots, because my nation does not make us proud.
