That's All We Need

The New York Times is reporting (a couple of years late in my opinion) on the increasing cooperation between Iran and Syria. Needless to say, this strikes me as being pretty much a non-story. Both Iran and Syria have been meddling in Iraq in attempts to undermine the effort to establish a legitimate, democratic government in Iraq allied with the U.S. Syria has been the major conduit by which al Qaeda operatives have entered Iraq, and Iran has provided funds and weapons to insurgents. Furthermore, there has been a fair amount of cooperation between the two countries where groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah are concerned.

However, there is one paragraph in the story that I think worthy of a story in and of itself:

Arab governments once hostile to Iran have begun to soften their public posture after decades of animosity toward Tehran. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt met Iran's national security chief, Ali Larijani, in Cairo recently, and Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, visited Tehran this month and declared the two nations to be good friends. In addition, Iranian officials recently sent messages of friendship to every Persian Gulf state.

This paragraph raises, in my mind, serious questions about why these Arab governments are choosing to extend olive branches to Iran now. Obviously, they are engaging Iran diplomatically for prudential reasons. It is also reasonable to conclude that they believe Iran to be pursuing nuclear weapons. After all, if Iran were merely pursuing nuclear power plants it would not alter the political landscape in the Middle East sufficiently for these governments to feel the need to be firmly on Iran's good side.

That's not quite what worries me, though. It is possible that these Arab governments are making nice with Iran simply to make sure they have all of their bases covered no matter how the Iran-vs-the West nuclear showdown plays out, but I don't think so. My reading of this is that these Arab nations have taken stock of the positions of Iran and the West and the actions each side is taking and have concluded that the West's attempts at a diplomatic solution will fail and Iran will acquire nuclear weapons because not even the United States, let alone the EU-3 and the UN, have the will to do what is necessary to prevent Iran developing them.