An interesting piece from Kuwait’s Arab Times translated on the indispensible site Watching America gives a glimpse of Tehran’s ongoing strategy to isolate the United States…this time from the U.S.’s own friends and allies:
THE attack on a Kuwaiti diplomat in Tehran, and the four-hour encirclement of Kuwait’s Embassy in Baghdad by the Revolutionary Guard are definite signs that Tehran has now taken its battle to friends of the United States, and that it intends to turn every Arab nation into a battlefield like Iraq, Lebanon or Palestine. This dangerous act was only the beginning, and is part of a strategy adopted by the Iranian regime to attack American projects in the Gulf region and expand the conflict zone by accusing others of being Washington’s agents. Previously, Iran had threatened to attack American projects in the Gulf if the United States attacked Iran. These threats are an attempt to impose Persian interests on Arabs, who are now acutely vulnerable.
It’s a classic strategy of divide and rule:
Iran appears to be so active outside its borders, that it has succeeded in dividing Iraq into tiny portions, is in control of Syrian planning and decision-making, is now threatening to turn Lebanon into another Iraq and has just succeeded in ending the Palestinian dream of establishing a homeland.
Now the Palestinian Authority is looked on as an American agent and the Hamas movement has taken over the Gaza Strip. Given what we know of the Iranian Regime’s ideology, one cannot separate the attack on the Kuwaiti diplomat from the regime’s attempts to involve all Gulf countries in Iran’s dispute with America.
And since Tehran regards the Gulf States as American agents, the regime reserves the right to fight against us. The Arab nations must take a firm stand to stop this Iranian behavior, before all of our nations are turned into battlefields in the settling of accounts amongst Iran, the United States and the West.
Read the entire piece.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.