The level of rhetoric from the opposing sides of the Persian Gulf has been getting louder and nastier with each passing day in the last two weeks.
Numerous demonstrations have been held in Tehran outside Arab embassies with curses shouted at diplomats and “Death to …” chants screamed at their countries.
In Saudi Arabia, the daily newspaper Al-Jazirah Tuesday called on the Arab states to close their embassies in Tehran. Saudi Arabia doesn’t have a free press so the editorial was likely approved by the Saudi government.
That was only one of many very heated editorials critical of Iran to appear in the media on the south side of the Persian Gulf in recent days.
The trial in Bahrain adds a new dimension. The Bahrain News Agency (BNA) said Tuesday that two Iranians and one Bahraini had gone on trial on charges of providing military and economic information to the Pasdaran between 2002 and this month.
The press report did not name the accused or say when the trial started.
It comes just two weeks after a Kuwaiti court sentenced two Iranians and one Kuwaiti to death for spying on behalf of the Pasdaran.
The trials and editorials suggest a policy decision has made among the Arab states along the Persian Gulf to confront Iran more directly than in the past over their concerns about Iranian meddling in their countries, chiefly with their Shia populations.
And it isn’t just indirect attacks on Iran. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal attacked Iran by name Sunday. He accused Iran of sowing “sedition and disturbances across the region.”
He said, “It is regrettable that Iranian policy continues to give Iran the right to interfere in the affairs of the region and its countries, to violate their sovereignty and independence in a way that contradicts all international conventions and laws and the principles of legitimacy.”
Kuwait last week expelled three Iranian diplomats it said were directly linked with the convicted Iranian spies. The Islamic Republic has now expelled three Kuwaiti diplomats of equal rank. Such tit-for-tat expulsions are the norm in diplomatic relations, so it came as no surprise,