Hideous Accommodation

Atta Kenare | AFP | Getty Images    Iran's President Hassan Rouhani meets with North Korea's ceremonial head of state, Kim Yong Nam in 2013.

War is good for business. It is during times of conflict that, ironically, free enterprise in armaments production gears up, spurred on by the governments of the states that are at war. Infamously, during times of violent conflict, prisoners are used as slave labourers to produce armaments, and the industries that enslaved people to ensure a profit ensued from the use and sale of their products, suffered no repercussions post-world war. Business is business, and the sales of arms meant profits, both for the manufacturers and for their governments.

The Saudi-led coalition has acknowledged it had made 'limited use' of British-made cluster bombs FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP/Getty Images

That's one issue, and it is one of long-standing presence. We deplore the outbreak of conflicts resulting in countless deaths and the destruction of civil infrastructure. We collectively, as intelligent human beings view with compassion the victims of war, and blame corrupt politicians and leaders of governments for their willingness to bring such bleak destruction onto the landscape, destroying countless lives. And conflicts, around the globe break out constantly.

The second issue is that which for the past few decades has taken the world's attention; a reawakened ideology of violent religious conquest has created widespread terrorism breaking out from the Middle East to North Africa, Europe to North America in terrifying incidents of Islam-inspired jihad, a war of religion, of a religion whose sacred scriptures demand its faithful obey their instructions to instill fear and terror in the minds of those spurning Islam, to destroy those nations refusing to surrender to Islam.

The irony is, of course, that Muslim nations themselves and their populations, have come under attack increasingly by those same death-delivering forces inspired by their common religion to view them as less than dedicated to Islam's final dictates to conquer the world. While the democratic, non-Muslim nations of the world attempt to protect themselves from the viral outbreaks of slaughter-bent jihadis, the targeted Islamic nations are forced to do the same.

As a result Muslim nations which themselves produce terrorists reflecting the tenets of the fundamentalist Islamic principles supported by the state, find themselves in a global 'fight' against terrorism, one that links them in agreement to a common cause with Western nations. There is nothing simple that comes out of the Middle East that can be readily addressed and corrected. Medieval and barbaric complexities of tribal, clan and sectarian opposition abound.

When two regional Islamic countries, one Arab, practising a majority-sect version of Islam, the other non-Arab, practising the minority-sect version of Islam, each manoeuvring to be recognized as the most powerfully reflective of Islam, as its most influential leader, to be feared and respected, use the other countries in the region as proxies, installing their supporters as satellites and challenging one another as an axis of conquest, war is inevitable.

And selling monumental amounts of technologically advanced weaponry to each of the adversaries vying for that leadership role is big business. Each side is championed by those international groups that find common cause with them, but even those that do not, and abhor them, will find it expedient to sell warplanes, attack helicopters, armoured vehicles, ballistic missiles, biological and chemical weapons and virtually any other weapons, for profit.

US President Donald Trump (L) walks with Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud after receiving the Order of Abdulaziz al-Saud medal from at the Saudi Royal Court in Riyadh on May 20, 2017. (photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP)

France, Britain, the United States, Canada and other weapons-producing nations all are eager to gather for themselves the countless billions in profits that accrue to those who produce materiel valued by the adversaries. Saudi Arabia, or Iran, each of which represents nations governed by tyrants; one a royal house the other a theocracy, each supporting terrorist groups of their own religious sect, each responsible for murder and mayhem both within and without, use their oil wealth to seduce the West into arming them.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, on the other hand, is free now after the infamous nuclear agreement to sell its oil on the open market, free of sanctions, and to get on with its mission to acquire for itself nuclear weapons. It has proceeded well with its technological efforts to produce more efficient long-range ballistic missiles. Iran's cooperation with yet another outlier country in achieving success in eventually producing Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles and nuclear-tipped warheads, has it and North Korea in intimate consultation process.

 

Western nations whose weapons manufacturers and governments are eager to be at the head of the line selling advanced weaponry to Saudi Arabia, know that the armoured vehicles produced by giants like General Dynamics will be used against their own citizens, but after all, Sunni Saudi Arabia is only putting down insurrections by Shiite minorities in its territory. And the conflict in Yemen is, after all, one between Saudi Arabia and Iran; Yemenite casualties are unfortunate but that's life.

 

The Middle East's Byzantine politics, assassinations, tyrannies, mass slaughter, aerial bombardment of civilian populations, chemical weapons attacks, flirtations with regime upheavals and civil wars merely represent business as usual there. That it is intrinsically related to the wider international jihad each supports is another thing altogether. But the West recognizes its 'friends' and 'allies' in the war against terror, and its conscience is untroubled in selling protester-murdering weapons to tyrants who must, after all, ensure their longevity is secured.