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Commentary: Could Consequences of Action/Inaction in the Middle East lead to World War III and the use of Nuclear Weapons?

In 2003 President George W. Bush launched an invasion into Iraq on the premise that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. During the early part of the invasion inspections of bunkers and facilities revealed that the smoking gun was missing. All though an Iraqi general would later claim that the evidence had been moved by 51 flights of Russian military cargo planes, the public never caught on, and so it is generally believed today that the weapons did not exist.

This is perhaps why, despite the overwhelming evidence, President George Bush did not pursue weapons of mass destruction in Iran towards the end of his presidency. Instead, he left it for President Barack Obama to deal with. Now, a more conservative leader has emerged in Israel, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. It is more likely that he will be willing to carry out a strike on the nuclear facilities in Iran than his predecessor, and time is not on his side.

One Israeli news source has all ready broken the story that Iran not only has the material for the bomb, but has in fact conducted two underground nuclear tests. If this is true, it means that Iran has had the capability to strike from that time forward, and is only waiting either for a strategic advantage, or simply to make more material for more bombs.

Rise of Proxy Nations

To better understand the nature of the conflict and see why it is at such a standstill, one has to see that Israel and Iran are really proxy nations for the United States, and for Russia and its satellite nations. Israel has been supplied cash and weapons by the United States for many years. Russia has been selling weapons to many Arab nations for not quite as long, mostly to set up an opposition to the dominance of the US.

If Israel and Iran enter into a conflict in the middle east and the oil supply becomes threatened, that is when the parent nations could enter into the conflict.

The Options

There are three different paths that the current situation may follow:

1. Maintain the stalemate. Israel does nothing and hopes that Iran also does nothing.

2. Israel attacks first. If Israel attacks, Iran will most likely respond with a nuclear attack if it is able to defend its missiles. It would then be up to Israel to shoot down those missiles before they reached their targets.

3. Iran attacks first. Again, Israel will have to shoot down the attacking missiles,

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