Striking Turkey

The news for the United States, that a dozen Central Intelligence Agency operatives were apprehended in Iran, was not good news. The CIA was, in fact, reeling from the reality that their assets in various countries have somehow been revealed. Earlier, Hezbollah had revealed they had rounded up dozens of spies they believed were working on behalf of the United States. Inside information is critical to spy agencies engaged in espionage to alert them to what their enemies are planning.

Given the likely disposal of these people seen as traitors to their countries, it will be difficult for the CIA to gain replacements. People so committed to a foreign country's interests rather than that of their own, that they will be prepared to risk life and limb to make themselves accessible as spies. Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah will no doubt make a ceremony of the summary sentencing of the alleged spies, and they will be publicly executed.

But these things work both ways. Iran, in particular, has seen a number of its elite scientists and military officials targeted for extinction by adversaries. Five Russian nuclear experts who had helped in the design of an Iranian atomic facility died in a mysterious 2010 plane crash. Fifteen Syrians and ten Iranians died in an explosion the same year, purportedly as they attempted to mount a warhead with nerve gas onto a Scud missile.

In 2008 an alleged Israeli spy who had supplied Iran with contaminated and defective electronic equipment was hanged. In 2010, a magnetic bomb killed an Iranian nuclear physicist in his car, and that very same day the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization was wounded by another magnetic bomb under his car. An Iranian quantum field theorist and elementary-particle physicist was killed by a remote controlled device, in his home.

More recently, in July 2011, a scientist working on a nuclear detonator for Iran was shot dead in Tehran by two gunmen on a motorcycle. And there have been other, more recent 'accidents' that have taken the lives of those working on perfecting rocket delivery systems, members of the elite Quds Guard. That, and the infiltration of worms like Stuxnet to slow down Iran's nuclear program.

The world is on edge, witnessing the turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa over protests leading to regime change, and conflict between Shia and Sunni sects. And Iran sits, waiting, to assume its heritage role of power in the region; a non-Arab Muslim state of huge influence as a Shia Islamist Republic. Determined to assume its 'rightful place' in the vanguard of change and power - and the assumption of nuclear power.

The other Muslim states in the region, along with Israel, the European Union and the United States are hugely unsettled at the prospect of Iran becoming a nuclear power. Uneasy speculation about a possible series of strikes on Iran's nuclear installations have led to the country's Ayatollahs warning of repercussions. NATO's missile defense shield in Turkey will become a target, the country's Revolutionary Guard warns.

And this is a fascinating turn of events. That Turkey, a member of NATO, the link between Europe and the Middle East, and latterly a confidant of Iran, but now seen with suspicion as a result of its condemnation of the Syrian regime, is being threatened with an potential act of war. The warning, according to the head of the Guards' aerospace division, represents a new defense strategy to ward of the potential threats from the U.S. and Israel.

It will be more than a little instructive to observe Turkey's reaction to his turn of events.