Turkey’s deputy prime minister called the raid “a dark stain on the history of humanity.” So now Ankara has its bloody shirt, which will be used — once Tehran inevitably announces the weaponization of its nukes — to justify Turkey’s rapid reach for the same. Just like Tehran cannot openly rationalize its bid for regional supremacy vis-à-vis archrival Saudi Arabia, Turkey requires an appropriate villain for its nuclear morality play. Anybody watching the deterioration of Turkish-Israeli relations over the past year knew that some cause célèbre was in the works. Suddenly, if perhaps on purpose, Turkey can claim that — despite its efforts to broker a non-nuclear peace in the region (including a recent enrichment deal engineered with Brazil) — it needs its own deterrent against Israel’s nuclear arsenal, too.
Checkmate, Turkey.
And as for the Obama administration’s dream of enlisting Turkey’s UN Security Council vote for further sanctions against Iran, the White House is missing the larger point: Turkey is uninterested in punishing Israel. Turkey is interested in power. The White House, in pursuing Obama’s naïve dream of a “world without nuclear weapons,” is chasing pawns around the board.
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