"Iran is way behind in developing a deliverable nuke." - Bobert

Deliverable? Many ways of delivering a nuclear device. Had the nuclear weapons programmes of Iran, Syria and Libya remained secret as they were supposed to, the means of delivery would have been component by component smuggled in with the device (small low yield tactical nuke) being assembled on site. My guess is that there would have been between four and six of them.

In 2003 GWB invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam Hussein just to ensure that that sort of scenario could not be played out against the USA, or any of her allies. Libya blinked, Iran crash stopped its programme and then went into overdrive developing missiles with the aid of the North Koreans (they now have ballistic missiles that can hit Moscow and anywhere in Europe), Syrian nuclear ambitions were discovered and the Israeli Air Force with the assistance of the Turks wiped their nuclear facility out. The uncertainty at the moment is whether or not Iran has restarted her nuclear weapons programme.

Under the original plan if small low yield nukes had gone off in Israel the only suspect would have been Iran, who along with the IAEA would be able to prove conclusively that ever atom of fissile material received from Russia for its nuclear programme was accounted for - After all the IAEA and the rest of the world would have not known of the existence of the secret uranium enrichment plants in Natanz or Qom.

"the promoter of a massive Israeli attack on Syria is..." -bobad

Is that a typo? Did you mean an attack on Iran?

beardedbruce

I fail to see any parallel or similarity between Europe between 1912 and 1914, or Europe in 1939.

The First World War was completely ridiculous, the Kaiser had been pushing for it for years and would have gone to war on any pretext. The supposed cause involved the Austro-Hungarian Empire (One dead Archduke), the Serbs (nationalism) and Tsarist Russia (meddling). Left to those actors there may well have been a war but it would have been minor and over in months. It was the Kaiser's Germany butting in from the sidelines that widened and escalated the problem. Today with the situation regarding Iran there is no such party pushing from the sidelines, in fact quite the reverse.

Europe in the 1930's had seen Germany elect a nationalist government to power, which then broke the Versailles Treaty, re-armed, re-occupied the Rhineland, annexed Austria, took over the Sudetenland then negotiated to leave the rest of Czechoslovakia alone - a promise that they promptly ignored. With a string of broken promises a line was drawn relating to Poland. Alliances were formed to assure the Poles. When Germany (viewed as the aggressor), the Soviet Union (seen to be acting in her own self interest to create a buffer-zone) and Hungary (pure Jackal opportunism) attacked Poland, the British and the French honoured their promises and declared war on Germany. Today with the situation regarding Iran the Iranians have just reached the first stage where the International Community suspect that they have "broken" the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Iranians may have trading partners but she has no allies save Syria and Venezuela. Russia is in no fit state to fight a war and neither is China, both know it and so does the USA.

The middle-east would have been far, far better off had the US backed the British and the French in 1956 (Even Eisenhower admitted his handling of Suez was the greatest mistake he ever made in his time in Office as President - he stopped the British and the French invasion of the canal zone in 1956 only to find HE had to invade the Lebanon himself in 1958).

Had the US backed the UK and France, Nasser's pan-Arabist Egypt would have been isolated from Israel by a corridor held by two permanent members of the UN Security council, there would have been no Fedayeen attacks from the Sinai between 1956 and 1967, there would have been no way for an Egyptian Army to assemble on Israel's borders, there would have been no closure of the Suez Canal or the Straits of Tiran (the thing that prompted Israel to act in 1967). Eisenhower's actions handed most Arab states in the middle-east and the North coast of Africa over to the Soviets causing the US to have to deploy a Fleet in the Mediterranean full time.

The British left the area in 1948 when the mandate expired. In 1937 the Peel Commission recommended a two-state solution, this was also adopted by the UN who proposed that to both sides in 1947 - The Jews of Palestine accepted it and the Arabs of Palestine rejected it and elected to fight.

In the break-up of the Ottoman Empire the League of Nations sought to create two secular havens of tolerance in the middle-east one was the Lebanon and the second was post-1923 Palestine. Lebanon was destroyed by Syrian interference and you can see how tolerant an Arab Palestine would work out by looking at Gaza.