August 6, 2007 (LPAC)--Well-placed Washington sources have warned EIR that the entire Persian Gulf and Eastern Mediterranean region is on the verge of a series of catastrophic confrontations--as the result of Vice President Dick Cheney's promotion, since his secret trip to Riyadh in Nov. 2006, of a Sunni bloc to confront Shi'ite Iran. One source pointed to the Bush Administration's rejection of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group recommendations, especially their call for convening a regional conference to solve the Iraq crisis, as another key blunder that has fueled the regional crisis.

On Tuesday, Aug. 7, Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Secretary of State Condi Rice will brief the President at Camp David on their recent Middle East travels. According to one source, the Bush Administration is desperate to create some kind of Palestinian state on a portion of the West Bank in the next 12 months. The effort, several sources concur, is aimed more at creating some kind of "Bush legacy" than at actually bringing justice to the Palestinian people. The poorly conceived "peace conference" is premised on an agreement with Israel that key elements of any final settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict will not be on the table. These include the Palestinian right of return, the final borders of a Palestinian state, and the status of Jerusalem as the capitals of both Israel and Palestine. Without those issues being addressed, any peace conference is guaranteed to fail, and any Arab governments that participate in such a sell-out will be in big trouble--not to mention Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Furthermore, sources indicate that the overwhelming majority of aid going to the Palestinian Authority will be directed at security issues--ie. the creation of a Palestinian police and military force to take on Hamas.

The sources added several other "hotspot" warnings about the generally deteriorating situation in the region:

• The situation inside Iraq is getting far worse, by the day, with the U.S. now openly plotting to overthrow the al-Maliki government. The decline in Sunni insurgent attacks on American soldiers is, in part, the result of a deal with Saudi Arabia, in which Wahabi clerics have been recruiting Iraqi Sunni tribal leaders to focus their attacks on Iran, and on Iraqi Shi'ites, rather than on the American occupation forces. Furthermore, sources are pointing to the upcoming referendum in the northern Iraqi oil-rich city of Kirkuk, on whether the city will be part of the Kurdish region. There has been ethnic cleansing by the Kurds of Iraqi Arabs, and this promises to not only explode internally, but will bring Turkey into the middle of the Iraq situation.
• Several sources also warned that the situation in Lebanon is nearing a tipping point, in which violence erupts between heavily armed sectarian factions. The sources warned that Iran has enlisted Syria to play a role in stoking the Lebanon crisis, because they see the United States building an overall Sunni bloc to confront Iran, and the Iranians are planning asymmetric responses.

In short, the situation in the entire region is on the verge of explosion, these sources concur. And on top of this, Cheney and his crowd in the Bush Administration are looking for the first excuse to bomb Iran--perhaps as early as this month.