Game Plan

Come now, the combined forces of Russian military advice and trainers, that of the Iranian Quds Republican Guard doing likewise, and trained and battle-ready Hezbollah at their service, and the Syrian Baath regime's military is unable to roust the rag-tag militias that have inspired a popular revolt for which Syrian civilians have paid so dearly? Of course there is the jihadi Sunni quotient that has upped the ante, as it were.

And just to complicate matters somewhat, there is Turkey on the cusp between East and West, latterly yearning to be more West than East, suddenly returned to its origins. But yet quite conflicted; its close association with Iran, supporting Syria, has not deflected Turkey from appealing to NATO for missiles defence from Syrian regime incursions. Both Egypt and Turkey denounce President Assad, while sidelining the Arab League and currying favour with Iran.

It is, to be certain, a classic. It can be seen, that vile and virulent struggle within Islam between Shia and Sunni in so many other countries of the civil and civilized Middle East. The once-Sunni minority under another Baathist tyrant oppressing the Shia majority in Iraq. Now the Iraqi Sunnis shudder at the collaboration between the Islamist Republic of Iran and their country's new government. And Iraqi Christians flee, while Kurds hope their geographic sector will remain immune.

In Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the Sunni dictators quell any unrest exhibited by their cowering Shiite minority. And in Syria the Alawite minority quiver in their thoughts at the very real prospect of the revolution-inspired Sunni majority succeeding in conquering the heroic champion of Syria, Bashar al-Assad. Revenge will be swift and bloody.

The UN and international sanctions have had little impact. Much as has been experienced with its great mentor, Iran whose own denunciation by the UN, the IAEA and the Western powers has done nothing to apprehend its march toward nuclear self-sufficiency. The better to cow and threaten those Sunni-led regimes by the fears nuclear-tipped bombs will succeed with.

The intricate, bedevilling details of the Middle East, its contrivances, its conspiracies and blandly sinister threats to world stability confounds reasonable minds. Sunni-majority Egypt now in the thrall of the Muslim Brotherhood finding common cause with Iran's theocracy, preparing for the inevitability of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists joining ranks in Syria post-Assad.

And Jordan, finally falling to the full influence of their majority Palestinian population, welcoming the Muslim Brotherhood taking the ship of state from the monarchy, vanquished. Logic should have it that Jordan is the state that Palestinians have long sought for their own, with the Hashemite Kingdom vanishing. And Lebanon finally surrendering to Hezbollah, an acolyte of Iran.

With Libya and Tunisia surrendering finally to fanatical Islam, what is left? Oh, of course, Saudi Arabia which with its oil wealth funded all those madrases in Pakistan and other Islamic states, even going as far as the West, to tutor and influence the Wahhabi way of Islamic life, will find its descendants returning to vanquish the House of Saud.

And finally, the fundamentals of authentic Islam will have returned to its hallowed roots. And those roots will spread as they once did, becoming the scourge of the West, of Africa and India, and they will seek to reimpose and to gather and to spread, like a metastasizing canker of one true religion over the face of this place we call our home.

Speaking lightly of nightmare scenarios.