How the Middle East's First Nuclear War Started
- Written by Editor
- Category: News Feeds
The following is a fictional story by Mathew Burrows, who, for the past decade, has overseen the creation of the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends Report—an intelligence-based futurist guide that has become essential reading for the White House as well as the Departments of State, Defense and Homeland Security.
As the United States enters the final hours of nuclear negotiations with Iran this weekend, it is worth considering the possible paths forward depending on the outcome of the Geneva meetings. You never know—this story could already be happening.
***
Jamil Khoury woke at night in a cold sweat, shaken by the magnitude of what he had done. He had always considered himself a peace-loving man—having grown up in Lebanon, he knew what war could do to a country. And now it looked as if he would be responsible for war on a scale no one had ever seen.
He sat for a while in silence watching the sun creep in through the shutters until his phone rang. He answered, and after a brief call, resolved to get the next flight from Beirut to New York. If he could just talk to Lars, Lars might be able to help.
***
Jamil spent the long flight rehashing his past. All he had wanted since childhood was to become a doctor. His father’s father—a charismatic and wise man—had been a highly respected doctor, and Jamil had wanted to emulate him in every sense. So he went to the famous Jesuit medical school in Beirut and afterward to Paris to do his residency. His plan was to become a cardiac surgeon.
Jamil never intended to go back to Lebanon, still recovering from its prolonged civil war. But when no Parisian hospital offered him a job at the end of his residency, it was clear he couldn’t stay in France either.
There was another option: The Khoury family had a long history in Saudi Arabia. As a surgeon in Jerusalem in the early 1920s, Jamil’s grandfather had treated Jack Philby—the father of British double agent Kim Philby—when the elder Philby was head of the British Secret Service in Palestine. At the time, many thought it strange that Philby used a French-speaking Maronite doctor when there were British or Jewish doctors available, but those who knew Philby well knew that he was both anti-Semitic and suspicious of his fellow Brits.
Jamil guessed his grandfather had been a spy for French interests in Jerusalem, at a time when the British and French were rivals for influence in the Middle East, but his grandfather never admitted anything—not even in his dying moments. His coffin, however, was draped in the tricolor, and the French government sent out a special representative to attend the funeral and burial in Lebanon. When Jamil asked his father about this, Jamil’s father responded only that Dr. Khoury had multiple allegiances and left it at that.
When Jack Philby resigned from his Secret Service post and moved to Saudi Arabia to serve as political adviser to Ibn Saud, Jamil’s grandfather went too, becoming one of the Saudi king’s personal physicians. By the time Jamil was born, his grandfather was very old and still living in Saudi Arabia, where he remained on friendly terms with the royal family until his death. It wasn’t hard for Jamil to use his grandfather’s contacts to establish himself in Riyadh, mostly treating the expat community.
Jamil met Soraya several months after settling in Riyadh, while she was visiting some American friends in the city, and married her not long after that. Soraya had Lebanese roots, but her Christian Maronite family had moved to Florida in the 1970s, and she, with her halting Arabic and beginner French, was thoroughly American. That didn’t matter to Jamil so much. He was shy. Soraya was beautiful and social and, he thought, a perfect way for him to break into Riyadh’s expat society. She was popular with the kind of people he hoped to attract as patients.
As for Soraya, the expat lifestyle suited her just fine. It was one big round of get-togethers and parties, punctuated by shopping trips to the Gulf or Paris or London. She certainly wasn’t there to explore her Middle Eastern roots.
Two years later they had a daughter, Adeline. Jamil still wanted a son, but Soraya didn’t want to get pregnant again. He hoped to change her mind. This had been at the back of his mind when he planned their trip to France.
***
It was on their first afternoon in Paris that Jamil met the prince.
He left Soraya upstairs in their room and was crossing the lobby of the Ritz in Place Vendôme to buy cigarettes when a well-dressed man in his forties approached him. The stranger had light complexion, not the more typical dark Arab coloring. Indeed, he looked rather ordinary—of medium height with no distinguishing features. In other circumstances, he would have been easy for Jamil to overlook.
“Dr. Khoury?” the stranger asked, quietly and in clear English. “We’ve met before. Maybe in Riyadh—or Jeddah?”
Jamil was annoyed at the interruption and responded in clipped French, “Monsieur, etes-vous sur?”
“Your grandfather knew mine, and served him well,” the stranger said, smiling. He had Jamil’s attention. “I have something to discuss with you. Meet me at midnight in the bar. Alone, s’il vous plait.”
Jamil wasn’t sure whether he’d keep the rendezvous at the bar. The staid doctor felt a small thrill at the thought of being drawn into an international cabal by a mysterious stranger. But it all seemed bit far-fetched—and would probably come to nothing. Besides, he and Soraya were getting on better. For once, she appeared focused on him.
After dinner the two were curled up on the bed when one of her American friends called. Two hours later, with Soraya still chatting on the phone, Jamil silently got up and left the room.
It was close to midnight when the stranger reappeared. As he entered the bar, Jamil heard the maître d’ address him as “prince.”
The prince took a seat next to Jamil. “You’re well known in the expat community,” he said. “As a good doctor, yes. And also as a bit of a bon vivant. I saw that you enjoyed yourself...