Will Arab Ire Over Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions Become Public?

While open criticism of Iran has been decidedly lacking among the Arab states, the release of the wikileaks documents has shown that several members of the GCC harbor serious concerns about Iran’s military ambitions. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates has supposedly called in the United States to take military action against Iran in the near future, referring to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as “Hitler.” Qatar is also supposedly interested in allowing the United States the use of an airbase in their country to conduct air bombing raids on Iran – the same base which the U.S. used during the second war with Iraq. The King of Bahrain, Hamad ibn Isa al-Khalifa, is quoted as calling for the U.S. to take “action to terminate (Iran’s) nuclear program, by whatever means necessary.”

The damning nature of some of these statements has led Iran to decry the leaked cables as works of fiction meant to undermine relations between it and other Gulf states. While this might be true, it seems that the release of the wikileaks cables may already be prompting some of these countries to finally take an open stance against their Persian neighbors. Sheik Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, Bahrain’s foreign minister, said Friday that the Middle East “can never live with” a nuclear-armed Iran. Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud of Saudi Arabia was also quoted as saying “it is incumbent on Iran to co-operate with the IAEA and remove any doubts that the world has.”