Care­ful read­ers will remem­ber that I said that Rus­sia was drag­ging its feet at the United Nations on America’s “kick Saddam’s ass” res­o­lu­tion because it was hop­ing for some guar­an­tee that the $8 bil­lion that Iraq owes Rus­sia would be paid. Well, here is the reas­sur­ance. In response to taken ques­tions, a State depart­ment spokesper­son said that Rus­sia could be com­pen­sated for more than $10 bil­lion if they stopped their nuclear coöper­a­tion with Iran and allowed their coun­try to become a nuclear waste dump.

One exam­ple is the poten­tial trans­fer to Rus­sia for stor­age of spent reac­tor fuel cur­rently held by third coun­tries, much of which requires US approval for such trans­fer because the US orig­i­nally sup­plied the fresh fuel to those coun­tries. If the Rus­sians end their sen­si­tive coöper­a­tion with Iran, we have indi­cated we would be pre­pared to favor­ably con­sider such trans­fers, an arrange­ment poten­tially worth over $10 bil­lion to Moscow.

This kind of deal will lead Rus­sia to ulti­mately sup­port the United States against Iraq.
Also, some other news that hasn’t been widely reported here in the States: an attempted coup in Qatar! Who knew about this? Any­one? Any­one? Seems that Amer­i­can troops helped put down a coup attempt against Sheikh Hamad Bin Khaleifah al-​Thani on Oct. 12. High rank­ing Qatari army offi­cers were arrested and sus­pi­cion imme­di­ately fell on an Islamist orga­ni­za­tion and Pak­istani and Yem­ini army recruits with alleged ties to Al Qa’ida.
The is big. Rela­tions with Saudi Ara­bia have cooled since Sept. 11, 2001, and Al Udeid Air Base out­side of Doha is the best alter­na­tive. If Qatar were moved out of America’s camp, the United States would have to rely on Incir­lik in Turkey and Diego Gar­cia in the Indian Ocean to fly sor­ties against Iraqi tar­gets. And most of the air­craft in the south would have to be car­rier based, which would cut down on the num­ber and fre­quency of sor­ties. It wouldn’t make an Iraqi oper­a­tion impos­si­ble, but it would make it more dif­fi­cult, I’ll wager.
What’s most wor­ri­some, from a Pen­ta­gon war planner’s point of view, is the poten­tial loss of Qatar, the con­tin­ued refusal of Saudi Ara­bia to allow the use of its air bases and trou­bling Al Qa’ida attacks in Kuwait. None of these things is crip­pling indi­vid­u­ally, but in a worst-​case sce­nario, America’s entire south­ern front in a Sec­ond Gulf War could crumble.