Do Coincidences Exist in the Middle East?

What do you think? Do coincidences exist or is the timing of certain events just too fortuitous to be random coincidences, especially when one is talking about events in the Middle East? In Dutch, the word for coincidence is 'toeval.' The word can be also read as 'val toe' which loosely translated means falling in(to) place.

Are certain events concerning Iran mere coincidences or are certain things just falling into place? Consider the following three things that all happened to appear in yesterday's news.

American green light for Israeli attack on Iran?
On Sunday, Vice President Joe Biden was asked by George Stephanopoulos, host of ABC's "This Week," about Iran and Israel. He was specifically asked what he thought about Prime Minister Netanyahu's statements that if Obama's engagement with Iran bears no fruit by the end of the year that Israel will take matters into its own hands. A follow-up question addressed the USA's position if Israel were to decide to attack Iran. Biden's answers clearly seemed to be a 'wink-wink' if not an out and out green light for an independent Israeli course of action, even if that included military action against Iran.

Here's the exchange:

STEPHANOPOULOS: And meanwhile, Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it pretty clear that he agreed with President Obama to give until the end of the year for this whole process of engagement to work. After that, he's prepared to take matters into his own hands. Is that the right approach?

BIDEN: Whether we agree or not. They're entitled to do that. Any sovereign nation is entitled to do that... If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursued now, that is their sovereign right to do that. That is not our choice.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But just to be clear here, if the Israelis decide Iran is an existential threat, they have to take out the nuclear program, militarily the United States will not stand in the way?

BIDEN: Look, we cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do when they make a determination, if they make a determination that they're existentially threatened and their survival is threatened by another country.

In and of itself interesting statements by the VP which of course led to many questioning if this indicated a change in US policy especially given Biden's statement three months ago on the same subject when he said Israel's then new government would be ill-advised to attack Iran:

"United States Vice President Joe Biden told CNN on Tuesday he did not think that Israel's new government would order a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. "I don't believe that Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu would do that. I think he would be ill-advised to do that," Biden told the U.S. network's reporter Wolf Blitzer."

The White House was quick to assert that Biden's statements yesterday were no alteration of standing policy: "White House officials said that the vice president's remarks demonstrated only U.S. allowance of Israeli sovereignty, and not a change in policy on the part of the Obama administration." Whatever that means...

Laying the groundwork for an attack?
On the same day, Sunday, the Times of London reported that Israel had recently secured Saudi assurances that it could use the airspace of Sunni Saudi Arabia if needed for an attack on its Shia neighbor Iran.

And if that wasn't enough then you can check out a report initially published in yesterday's Jerusalem Post asserting that "the IAF plans to participate in aerial exercises in the US and Europe in the coming months with the aim of training its pilots for long-range flights."

So all in one day, 1) we hear America's VP giving wide berth to any action against Iran deemed necessary by Israel; 2) we learn that Saudi Arabia may have taken what would be in any other situation the extraordinary step of granting Israel at least tacit approval for using its airspace in an attack on Iran; 3) and we read that Israel is perhaps stepping up long-range flight training for its pilots in Europe and in the USA.

Hmmmmm? What does 1 + 2 + 3 equal in this equation? Of course one could claim that all these statements and news stories have been leaked with the intention of pressuring Iran. But given the historical wackiness shown by Ahmanidejad, given the fact that we now know Ahmadinejad is clearly the Supreme Leader's golden boy, given the total disregard shown by Iran's government over the last weeks for world opinion and especially for the lives of its own people, then using these things as leverage would hardly seem worth the effort. And serously believing that they could have any effect as leverage seems outlandish.

So the question reamins, coincidence or things falling into place?