My In-Depth Al Jazeera English opinion piece "Solve Syria, leave Iran alone" with Martin Van Creveld. This article builds on our NYT article entitled “In the Arab Spring, Watch Turkey” which attacks the view that the West is involved in a Cold War with Iran as incorrect and demonstrates how Turkey is the primary victor of the Arab Spring.The world must turn its attention to Syria, not Iran, to avoid escalation into a regional war.The real threat is not Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon, but Israel's attempts to halt it, which would surely incur Iranian retaliation via the Strait of Hormuz. This would cause the price of oil to skyrocket to more than $200 a barrel and send the world's major economies into sustained free fall. In fact, despite the faux solidarity that US President Barack Obama expressed at the conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in early March, Israel's sabre-rattling appears to be galvanising a US modus vivendi with Iran in order to avert an Israeli attack.Now is not the time to provoke Iran, but rather to tend to Syria's troubles before it is too late - for example, by publicly offering Assad a way out of the country that would safeguard the minority Alawite community if he were toppled or forced to flee. If the Syrian situation is ignored, its spill-over may inadvertently provoke Israeli or Iranian action, inciting a regional war and a global depression.
Solve Syria, Leave Iran Alone