Iran Nuclear Watch: Rafsanjani – “We Are at the Service of the Whole Region”

Former Iranian President and head of the Expediency Council, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani talks to the press upon his arrival to Kuwait City. Iran’s influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was in Kuwait on a visit aimed at easing fears of Iran’s Gulf neighbours about its nuclear programme.

AFP: Iran’s Rafsanjani in Kuwait to reassure on nuclear crisis

Iran’s influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was in Kuwait on a visit aimed at easing fears of Iran’s Gulf neighbours about its nuclear programme.

Rafsanjani, also the head of Iran’s powerful Expediency Council, is due to hold talks with officials, including Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah and Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammad al-Ahmad al-Sabah, during the two-day visit.

The talks will focus on the escalating crisis over Iran’s nuclear programme amid reports of possible US military action against the Shiite-ruled Islamic republic, officials and diplomats said Sunday.

“We want to assure you (the Gulf region) that we are at the service of the whole region,” Rafsanjani told an accompanying Iranian television crew at Kuwait airport.

Of course, the Gulf States should be concerned about a military confrontation between Iran and the United States. But, ask the Kuwaitis who bailed their asses out when Saddam invaded them – USA.

US-ally Kuwait and other Sunni-ruled Gulf Arab states are concerned about the possibility that the current standoff may develop into a full-scale military confrontation and fear an environmental catastrophe from the Iranian nuclear plant being constructed in Bushehr on Gulf waters.

Kuwait’s leading liberal newspaper Al-Qabas warned in an editorial Sunday entitled “Welcome Rafsanjani… But,” that Gulf states may be the main victims of a possible US-Iranian military confrontation.

“We say but because our Iranian brothers have placed us — the people on the other bank of the Gulf — right in the middle of the confrontation… against our will, and we may become its main victim,” the daily said.

And their fears are justified.

But, their greatest fear will be the West freeing itself from oil dependence and the collapse of their oli-exporting economies.

Stay tuned……