Ticking clocks and ‘accidental’ war

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By Alastair Crooke, Conflicts Forum, October 14, 2007.

"Whilst Washington looks at the Iranian prospects through the prism of a binary, to bomb or to acquiesce decision, facing President Bush over the remainder of his presidency, the actors in the region see the conflict as imminent and arriving in a roundabout way, through the backdoor – either via escalation of Western and Israeli tension with Syria; or from events in Lebanon, or a combination of both interacting with each other. All these key actors are convinced that conflict, should it occur, will convulse the entire region. They see the Wursmer ‘engineered’ war that ultimately will extend to Iran, as almost upon them; and they wonder at the silence from Europe and from informed observers in the US. Is it, they speculate, that everyone is so focused on Iraq, and so convinced that Iraq will be the arena in which the decision on Iran will be shaped, that they have forgotten to attend to the backdoor that David Wurmser (until last month Dick Cheney’s Middle East adviser) already has a foot around?.....

This event however is only one among a series of ticking clocks, any one of which can be the one set to initiate the first stage of a widening conflict:

(i) Lebanon:.....
(ii) Syria:....
(iii) The Salafis: .....
(iv) The ticking clock in Iraq: .....
(v) Pakistan:......
(vi) Turkey: .....
(vii) Instability in the West Bank:.....

The US initiative to hold a conference penciled in for New York in November on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is largely discounted in the region. The senior Hamas leadership view this as a maneuver aimed principally at tying moderate Arab states support to Israel as part of the preparations for more aggressive action against Iran and Syria, rather than having a Palestinian state as its central purpose. Hamas has concluded that its central purpose is to provide cover for Arab states to be brought into coalition with Israel without unsettling their domestic populations too greatly. The assumption is that this conference could indicate the possible timing of conflict, which might follow soon after the sealing of a coalition."