Middle East Bedfellows

Iran has stepped up its nuclear program, despite the series of 'hard-hitting' sanctions that are supposed to have brought it to its knees economically.  People within Iran may be facing critical shortfalls of imports and basic commodities, but Iran is still sending its warships to Sudan to load up with rockets for delivery through Egypt to Hamas and likely Syria as well.

Hamas has a dire requirement for a fresh infusion of rockets, the more advanced the better, for their purposes.  And it is most certainly in Iran's interests to keep Hamas well supplied with those incendiary devices, and to improve as well on their technical quality.  Iran in all likelihood is not ecstatic about Qatar's arrival at Hamas's doorstep to fund Gaza, pulling the sponsor rug out from under.

Iran has much on its hands and that seems to be the way the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prefers things to be; he and his Islamic Republic rise to a challenge.  They've done so admirably, despite a few set-backs here and there; nuclear scientist losses, Stuxnet interferences, mysterious blasts, a cut-back of oil exports; they have risen above them all.

But not without some help from their friends.  And it's surprising the number of friends a rogue country threatening world stability has hovering in the background; the foreground as well when the case demands, as at the United Nations.  Sales and export of advanced weaponry trump all other considerations, bringing Russia and China to Iran's side.

But in the case of Turkey, it is a common alliance revolving around Islamism, their theocratic roots impelling them to a partnership that not even a stark difference of opinion around Syrian bloodlust can sever.  Despite the UN Security Council sanctions imposed in the Islamic Republic, Turkey has increased its imports from Iran, paying them directly, bypassing the banks who won't handle such transactions.

Turkey may call upon its allies in NATO to place Patriot missiles on its border with Syria in fear of a chemical-laced rocket attack, but it is not averse to defying a US/EU/UN convention in defying sanctions imposed on Iran.  Exports from Turkey to Iran rose 243.5% in 2012 over 2011.  This, even while a new UN IAEA report revealing that Iran has completed installation of 2,700 centrifuges at the Fordow installation.  

Speeding up production of 20% enriched uranium.
 
In any other venue this would appear as the strange bedfellows syndrome.  In the Middle East one can never be assured that what appears logical on the surface will reflect what occurs in actual relations.  Two terrorist groups whose clear motivation and oft-stated mission is to destroy another country in the Middle East, aided and abetted by Iran, are held in respect by Muslim countries who see nothing amiss in the proposed scenario.

Yet they continue to play the West's game of appearing to be prepared to accept the State of Israel, a Jewish state that accepts for citizenship Muslims and Christians, if it would only settle its territorial dispute with the Palestinians.  Knowing full well that the Palestinians, supported by the Arab League, will never conclude a peace agreement with a Zionist entity that it claims extorted land from its rightful owners, the Arabs.

Late on the scene, but owners in perpetuity of all they survey.  

Denying that Jews, despite all historical evidence to the contrary, ever were established in the Middle East, and particularly in land now called Palestine for Arabs, not Palestine for Jews.  Jerusalem was never the Hebrew capital of a Jewish state in ancient history, nor did the Temple of Solomon, despite the ancient writing of Josephus who became a citizen of Rome, ever exist.