But I was completely unaware of another potential source of conflict. I was sent this and will post it as I got it with minimal editing:
The Middle East may be about to go to a new level
Fighting over Natural Gas/Oil under the Eastern Mediterranean
1. Cyprus's Block 12 where drilling starts Monday borders on the huge Leviathan field Israel is developing in the eastern Mediterranean, whose proven gas reserves are calculated to be 8.5 trillion cubic feet. This would supply the entire US economy's needs for a year.
2. Noble Energy of Houston has a license to drill in Cyrus's Aphrodite while the Israeli company Delek which is developing the Israeli offshore gas fields also has an option in the Cypriot field.
3. Greece and Israel concluded a mutual defense pact on Sept. 4, 2011. Ten days later, Prime Ministers George Papandreou and Binyamin Netanyahu agreed to activate the pact in the light of Turkish threats against Israel and to exploration activity in the Mediterranean basin."
"The guessing in Washington, NATO and Israel is that the most likely arena for a potential clash of arms in the Mediterranean is offshore Cyprus and it is most likely to evolve into sea and air confrontatons involving Turkey, Greece, Cyprus and Israel."
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Debka, where this article was printed, is slightly and sometimes a pronounced reactionary Israeli Newsletter, but there are quite a few other sources suggesting the same.
Comment: it takes a very long time to fully develop an off-shore gas field, so my hunch is that there will be lots of sabre-rattling, but the risk of conflict in this area is probably not as great as the risk closer to Israeli borders.
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