MANAMA (AFP) — US Defence Secretary Robert Gates is expected on Saturday to urge Gulf states to present a united front against the threat from Iran, senior American officials said on Friday in Bahrain.
His call in a major speech to a regional security conference will come five days after the publication of a US intelligence report which concluded that Iran halted a secret nuclear weapons programme four years ago.
Monday's National Intelligence Estimate declared with "high confidence" that the secret programme was halted in 2003 in response to international pressure and isolation, suggesting that Tehran was more susceptible to such pressures than previously thought.
"Their behaviour has really been a problem, and to the extent that it destabilises the region, which it does, then it becomes a problem for us," Admiral William Fallon, head of US Central Command which includes the Middle East, told reporters.
"Everything they've done publicly has been a problem," he said, noting that Iran supplied weapons and other support for insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and seized 15 British sailors and marines for nearly two weeks earlier this year.
Gates is expected to urge Gulf Arab states to cooperate and share more security information in the face of the Iranian threat, be it nuclear or from ballistic missiles, a senior US defence official said.
"The ballistic missile issue for this region is one that is severe and one that literally impacts the region because this is a small and fairly dense neighbourhood," the defence official said.
A senior American military officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Gulf states' "biggest concern, as they have tried to express it to me, is more the pressure that they feel from Iran as the want-to-be big dog in this area.
"The shadow of Iran, and their increasingly outward, bellicose monologue that emanates from Tehran, is what concerns them. That's the real focal point -- pressure felt from Iran spreading its influence over this region, or trying" to do so, he said.
A US defence department official said Gates would tell the 4th Regional Security Summit, organised by the International Institute for Strategic studies, there are a lot of shared threats in the region... that the Gulf and the region is and remains a vital, strategic US interest and the US will remain in the region."
