Karl Vick, Time: The Middle East Nuclear Race Is Already Underway
While the U.S. and other world powers work to constrain Iran's nuclear program, five rival nations plan atomic programs
One of the most important reasons why the U.S. is trying to conclude a nuclear deal with Iran is to prevent an Iranian bomb from triggering a nuclear race in the Middle East. Yet even as talks continue now in Switzerland, Tehran’s regional rivals have already begun quietly acting on their own atomic ambitions. Nuclear power may be on the wane almost everywhere else in the world, but it’s all the rage in the place with all that oil.
Egypt’s announcement last month that it was hiring Russia to build a reactor near Alexandria made it only the latest entrant in an emerging atomic derby. Every other major Sunni power in the region has announced similar plans. And though none appear either as ambitious nor as ambiguous as what’s taken place in Iran—which set out to master the entire atomic fuel cycle, a red flag for a military program—each announcement lays down a marker in a region that, until recently, was notable as the one place on the planet where governments had made little progress on nuclear power.
WNU Editor: As long as I can remember nuclear proliferation in the Middle East has always been the nightmare scenario that everyone feared .... and now it is becoming a reality.
Update: Mushroom clouds in the Middle East draw closer -- Irish Times
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