In The Middle East....

How fares the Arab Middle East? Not too well, quite obviously. Libya and Syria have disintegrated. Iraq is following suit. Lebanon has long since gone that route. And Yemen is doing its best to join them. While Iran is rejoicing that it now has effective control of Damascus, Baghdad, Sanaa and Beirut, its proxy militias like Hezbollah and the Houthis doing splendid work on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran, preparing to command the Middle East.

Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, accuses the West of trying to sabotage a reactor being built near Arak.   Atta Kenare/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Bahrain is next in line, its majority Shiites prepared to respond to Iran's urging. Where is America, the saviour of all the Arab states which have traditionally waited for it to swing into commanding action on their behalf? Action which always seemed to end badly when factional, tribal, sectarian hatred became fully unhinged resulting in mass atrocities, the cause of which has always been attributed to the interference in Arab affairs of the United States.

Well, they're still there, admittedly a mere shadow of their once dominating presence, but there, regardless. Providing to the new Arab version of NATO, logistical support and a cheering section for the long-overdue resolution of the Arab League to finally take on the responsibility for their own security. What is happening in the Middle East, after all, is a regional affair, one divided along sectarian lines of opposing visions and versions of Islam.

A military exhibition displays a Shahab-3 missile under a picture of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran, in 2008. The range of the missile threatens Israel as well as U.S. forces in the Gulf. (AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian, File)

And so, Saudi Arabia's face-off with the Iranian Republic is in the works. Iran's meddling in the affairs of Arab States had its breaking point when Yemen too fell into disorder and it was finally decided that if combined Arab armies were capable of mounting offensives, albeit failed ones, against Israel, they were more than capable of defending themselves against their Persian nemesis.

The agreement to assemble a force entailing troops from Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Sudan, along with other Gulf nations and possibly Pakistan to be based in Egypt is an initiative whose time has finally arrived. To be commanded by a Saudi general, it will have a permanent, structured command, a multinational force prepared to react to crises. There will be an air command and a naval command and a considerable land force.

The respective countries involved will pay their share of the fighting components of air, sea, land and special forces. The command structure itself to be financed by the Gulf Cooperation Council.
The big question looming for the future, and perhaps not too advanced into the future, is whether this will lead to a very major conflict in the Middle East between Sunni and Shiite interests.

Or whether Iran will be prepared when faced with this push-back against its strenuous, secretive and hugely successful instability imposed on the Sunni states,  to pull back its ambitions.

All of this is intertwined with the negotiations just concluded for the framework of a June 30 deal by UN Security Council members China, Russia, France, Britain, the United States -- and Germany to reach an agreement on dissuading Iran from its nuclear trajectory toward an atomic bomb. Clearly, the P5+1's resolution to disarm Iran's aspirations have disintegrated in their fatigue over negotiations with a recalcitrant, determined country assured of its nuclear entitlements.

A Shahab-3 ballistic missile on display in Tehran on Thursday, Sept. 30, 2010. The missile's range threatens Israel as well as U.S. forces and allies in the Gulf. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

So much so that it has declared that it will sign no agreement to diminish its nuclear capabilities without the immediate lifting of all sanctions that have crippled its economy, despite having reputedly agreed to the stipulation of the P5+1, that sanctions will be incrementally lifted only if and when Iran demonstrates it plans to comply with the watered-down demands of the P5+1 negotiators.

Iran’s nuclear reactor in Arak, about 150 miles southwest of Tehran, is being redesigned. Hamid Foroutan/Iranian Students News Agency, via Associated Press

The apparent conciliatory attitude of the negotiators to the resolute counter-demands of Iran signals a failure on the part of the Security Council plus Germany. An event hugely alarming to Sunni Arab states, contemplating the future with a nuclear-armed Iran, even if Saudi Arabia can anticipate receiving an emergency shipment of nuclear arms from Pakistan on short notice. With sanctions lifted, Iran's depressed economy will soon be flying sky-high.

Iran's new financial resources will allow it to continue to forward its religious agenda, Shiite-style, to sponsor ongoing terrorism against the Sunnis, Israel, and the detested West, in the process re-arming and strengthening its fully competent forces as it reaches long tentacles to continue growing its geographic hegemony both in the Middle East and well beyond it, from North Korea to Venezuela, while the stature of Sunni Islam is diminished.