Leading Arab countries have expressed serious worries to officials in the Obama administration that the president will make a “bad deal” with Iran over its nuclear program.
“At this stage, we prefer a collapse of the diplomatic process to a bad deal,” according to a Wall Street Journal report that quoted an Arab official.
Arab countries have long feared that a nuclear Iran would pave the way for the Islamic Republic to fulfill its dream-nightmare of turning the entire Middle East, after Israel is replaced by “Palestine,” into a Caliphate state.
Lurking beneath the concern of a nuclear Iran is a religious war. All of the major Arab countries, first and foremost Saudi Arabia, are led by Sunni Muslims. Iran is a Shi’ite Muslim regime. The two sects mix like TNT and a match.
If President Barack Obama wants to prevent a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, he won’t dare make a bad deal with Iran because doing so would put Saudi Arabia next in line.
Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence, said in November that. Riyadh will “seek to have the same terms [as Iran] in developing our nuclear energy.”
But if Obama gets “tough” and refuses to let Iran wiggle him around its nuclear finger, the Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu might look good.
That really puts the president in dilemma, forcing him to decide which is worse for American security – a nuclear Iran or another Netanyahu government.