Friday 26 February 2010

IRAQ>N


Barack Has a Dream...

More artwork from The World of Dreams



Simply Brilliant.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I thought that I was having a dream last night... I promply woke up, went into the bathroom, and let a huge one rip. It was gas.

I imagine Mr. Obama's dreams are even less spectacular than last night's case of gas.

The Contentious Centrist said...

Funny. I thought the big mushroom was a dream proclaimed many times over by Ahmadinejad. Never has Obama expressed the slightest intention of bombing Iran. So why would Buj al Arab gush over such an obvious lie?

"On the surface, it would seem as though Arab leaders would support the Iranian nuclear program. After all, Iran is a fellow Muslim state in close geographic proximity that shares a strong hostility for Israel. Moreover, Pakistan's triumph in developing nuclear weapons to combat India's nuclear program generated great pride in the Arab world. Yet, save for Syria, which supports the Iranian nuclear program because of its strategic alliance with Tehran, Arab governments disapprove of Iran's nuclear pursuits, commonly believing that Iran is using its civilian nuclear program as a pretext to develop nuclear weapons.

In several meetings, leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which consists of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates, have urged Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions, with GCC Secretary General Abd Arahman Attiyah saying [in Arabic] at a November 2005 council meeting, "The Iranian nuclear program does not have any justification. . . . We call on the international community to make the Middle East a zone free of weapons of mass destruction."

Likewise, in February 2006, Egypt, which has always called for denuclearizing the Middle East, made clear that it opposes Iran's nuclear program by voting to transfer the Iranian crisis from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors to the U.N. Security Council. (See "Nonaligned Realinging to Confront Iran.") Similarly, the Security Council's current leader, Libya, and its North African neighbors aren't friendly to the current leadership in Tehran. Morocco hosted Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in the 1980s after the Islamic Revolution, while Algeria and Tunisia enjoy strong political, economic, and diplomatic relations with Egypt and the Gulf States. For its part, Libya revealed several secret connections between A. Q. Khan and Tehran when it dismantled its nuclear weapons program in 2004. (See "Arab States in the Iranian Nuclear Equation" [in Arabic].)

There is also historical precedent. Iran and the Arab world have never had a strong relationship. Iran is the birthplace of Shiism while the Arab states are mostly Sunnites. After Mohammed's death in 632, both the Sunnis and Shiites wanted to inherit the leadership of Muslim communities around the world. When Arab Muslim armies defeated the Persian Sassanide Empire 20 years later, it began a rift between Iran and the Arab world that lasted for several centuries. In particular, border disputes continue to this day. In 1970, Iran forcibly occupied three Arab islands located at the entrance of the Persian Gulf. The United Arab Emirates still considers these islands as part of its territory. In addition, Iran briefly declared Bahrain as part of its territory because Bahrain is guided by a Sunni regime while the majority of the population is Shia."

http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/why-arab-leaders-worry-about-irans-nuclear-program