MANAMA, 9 December 2007 — US Defense Secretary Robert Gates yesterday said Iran’s foreign policy was a threat to the United States, the Middle East and all countries within range of missiles, which he said Tehran was developing.
“There can be little doubt that their destabilizing foreign policies are a threat to the interests of the United States, to the interests of every country in the Middle East, and to the interests of all countries within the range of the ballistic missiles Iran is developing,” Gates told delegates attending a conference on regional security in the Bahraini capital, Manama.
On Friday Gates, speaking to Al Hurra television, had called for an “air and missile defense umbrella” over the Gulf region to deter missile attacks by Iran.
Gulf countries, however, signaled loudly at the security conference yesterday their opposition to any military option against Tehran. “We want the military factor (of Iran’s nuclear program) to be eliminated,” the Secretary-General of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Abdul Rahman Al-Attiyah said.
“What we care for in the GCC is finding solutions that enhance security and stability ... and believe in dialogue as a way to solve the crisis,” between the West and Iran, he said. “We are not for the military confrontation option,” said Al-Attiyah.
Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hamed ibn Jassim Al-Thani went further, calling on Washington to engage Tehran in dialogue to reach a solution. “Direct talks do not mean agreeing (from the start) with the other party,” he told conference delegates yesterday.
He also reiterated that being “pushed into a military confrontation with Iran” would not be in the interest of the GCC countries.
Toby Dodge, a Middle East consulting senior fellow at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), said the GCC fears of military escalation in the Gulf were justified.
“Iran would retaliate to any (US) military action and the Gulf region would be affected... I assume that their strategy is to support an active US policy to restrain Iran (on the nuclear front), but short of military action,” he said.
Gates claimed in his speech yesterday that Iran was developing “medium-range ballistic missiles that are not particularly cost-effective unless equipped with warheads carrying weapons of mass destruction.”
His accusations came five days after the publication of the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which said that Iran halted a secret nuclear weapons program four years ago — a conclusion at odds with Washington’s stance and accusations of recent years.
Gates conceded the timing of the report was not ideal. “The estimate fairly has come at a wrong time, it has annoyed a number of our good friends and confused a number of people,” he told delegates.
