Until last week, the news coverage in Kuwait only spoke of the band of spies as collecting information about the Kuwaiti military and US operations in Kuwait for the Pasdaran.
Three men—two Iranian nationals and a Kuwaiti—were sentenced to death a few weeks ago for espionage.
But Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Shaikh Mohammad As-Salem Al-Sabah last Thursday upped the charges as Arab anger at Iran grew by leaps and bounds.
He told Dubai-based Al-Arabiyya television, “They had explosives and the intention to bomb vital Kuwaiti installations.” That raised the ante against Iran. All countries spy and espionage is accepted, if punishable. But bomb plots are an entirely different matter.
“We are talking about a cell whose task was not only to monitor the [US] military presence that in their view is hostile,” he said, “but it exceeded that.”
The US Army has a huge base, Camp Arifjan, out in the Kuwaiti desert. It is primarily a staging post for the US forces in Iraq.
There is much talk around the Persian Gulf urging the Arab states to sever all diplomatic relations with Iran. But while unveiling the bomb plot, the foreign minister also made clear he opposed such talk.
“We completely reject severing ties,” he said. But he added a demand that the Islamic Republic needs to learn to treat its Arab neighbors as “sovereign” and not “subordinate.”
Meanwhile, down in Bah-rain the courts have started trying Ibrahim Ghuloom Abdul-wahab, a Bahraini national, on charges of passing classified military information and sensitive economic data to the Pasdaran.
The trial began last Wednesday and little in formation was released beyond the fact that Abdulwahab stands accused of being paid to spy for Iran since 2002.