* Pentagon Predicted "Islamic State" * Israel's Nukes Set Back NPT

NAFEEZ AHMED, iprdoffice at gmail.com, @nafeezahmed
Ahmed is an investigative journalist whose books include A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It. He just wrote the piece "Pentagon report predicted West's support for Islamist rebels would create ISIS," which states: "A declassified secret U.S. government document obtained by the conservative public interest law firm, Judicial Watch, shows that Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad.

"The document reveals that in coordination with the Gulf states and Turkey, the West intentionally sponsored violent Islamist groups to destabilize Assad, and that these 'supporting powers' desired the emergence of a 'Salafist Principality' in Syria to 'isolate the Syrian regime.'

"According to the newly declassified U.S. document, the Pentagon foresaw the likely rise of the 'Islamic State' as a direct consequence of this strategy, and warned that it could destabilize Iraq. Despite anticipating that Western, Gulf state and Turkish support for the 'Syrian opposition' - which included al-Qaeda in Iraq -- could lead to the emergence of an 'Islamic State' in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the document provides no indication of any decision to reverse the policy of support to the Syrian rebels. On the contrary, the emergence of an al-Qaeda affiliated 'Salafist Principality' as a result is described as a strategic opportunity to isolate Assad. ...

"In a strikingly prescient prediction, the Pentagon document explicitly forecasts the probable declaration of 'an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria.'"

ALICE SLATER, aslater at rcn.com
Slater is with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and the Abolition 2000 coordinating committee.

The Washington Post reports in "U.N. nuclear conference collapses over WMD-free zone in the Middle East" that: "An attempt to strengthen and expand the world's premier arms-control treaty ended in failure here Friday as international delegations squabbled over a long-sought goal of establishing a ban on weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East.

"Following four weeks of negotiations, the United States and several of its allies rejected the conference's final document, which was supposed to further the implementation of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

"The United States and Britain refused to accept the establishment of an 'arbitrary' deadline to hold a conference on a zone that would be free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, and Canada objected to a process that didn't include Israel, which has not signed the treaty. ...

"'If for security reasons the [P5 (U.S., Russia, U.K., France, China)] feel that they must be armed with nuclear weapons, what about other countries in similar situations?' asked South African delegate Abdul Samad Minty during a May 16 session. 'Do we think that the global situation is such that no other country would ever aspire to nuclear weapons to provide security for themselves, when the five tell us that it is absolutely correct to possess nuclear weapons for their security?'"

Slater also highlights another piece on the NPT process, see PDF. In addition, see Slater's comments on IPA news release last week: "As Anti Nuclear Weapons Activists Released, 91 Nations Pressing Abolition."