Middle East Security Issues: In the Shadow of Weapons by Barry R. Schneider

Show description

Nuclear technological development remains at the research stage. • One research reactor in Damascus, under IAEA safeguards. • Ratified the NPT on 9/24/69; has not signed the CTBT. Chemical • Largest and most advanced CW capability in the Middle East. • Reported to have chemical warheads for Scud ballistic missiles, and chemical gravity bombs for delivery by aircraft. • Estimated CW stockpile in hundreds of tons. • Agents believed to include Sarin, VX, and mustard gas. • Major production facilities near Damascus and Homs, with hundreds of tons of agents produced annually.

Iraq could not sustain any initial success, however, and would probably accomplish nothing more than provoke a United States, Southern Gulf, or Iranian reaction that would far offset any advantages Iraq could gain. The only exception might be a proxy unconventional or terrorist attack that allowed Iraq to preserve some degree of plausible deniability. The wild cards in such contingencies are US determination to act, the future size of the US presence in the Gulf, US ability to surge its power projection capabilities at the time of a given crisis, Southern Gulf support for the United States and willingness to provide the United States with suitable facilities, and the political liabilities the United States would face in terms of the response from nations outside the region.

30 CORDESMAN There are four other major changes in the military balance that seem likely to affect the Gulf well into the twenty-first century. The Gulf states have made little progress since the Gulf War in dealing with their structural economic problems and political divisions. Iraq, whose economy had largely collapsed during the Iran-Iraq War, experienced a full collapse in 1991. Its Sunni, Shi’ite, and Kurdish factions are held together by one of the most repressive regimes since Nazi Germany.