[Times-UK] Giles Whittell - Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa in an interview with The Times has become the first Arab leader to jettison the language of diplomacy and directly accuse Tehran of seeking nuclear weapons. "While they don't have the bomb yet, they are developing it, or the capability for it," he said - the first time one of Iran's Gulf neighbors effectively has accused it of lying about its nuclear program. The U.S. Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain, its main carrier battle group tasked with securing the Strait of Hormuz. The King Fahd causeway to Khobar makes Bahrain a gateway to the richest oil reserves on Earth in eastern Saudi Arabia. The Iranian coast is ten minutes away by fighter or medium-range missile. And this week a senior Iranian general said that suicide bombers were ready to strike at targets throughout the Gulf "if necessary." Such rhetoric will focus minds in Qatar, Riyadh and the United Arab Emirates. But its effect is especially chilling in Bahrain as the only Sunni-led country with a Shia majority that is not at war or on the brink of war. In a newspaper editorial this summer, a close associate of President Ahmadinejad rekindled an old claim on Bahrain as Iran's 14th province, with echoes of Saddam Hussein's designs on Kuwait in the late 1980s that were picked up from London to Washington. The claim "touched on the legitimacy of our country," said Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid al-Khalifa.
2007-11-02 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive