As I’ve argued before, one of the problems in portraying Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons as a concern for Israel alone is that it ignores the panic in the Arab world. In the Gulf especially, the chorus for a direct confrontation with Iran is growing. Here’s the Kuwait Times:

Kuwaiti writer Abdullah Al-Hadlaq has urged the Gulf states to suspend their diplomatic relations with Iran and deal with its real agenda. He insisted that the country’s nuclear program was not adopted for peaceful targets despite Iran’s pretence that it was, in reality being a military program.

Al-Hadlaq pointed out that the available gas reserves in Iran could supply the country’s energy requirements indefinitely, meaning that it therefore has no need for nuclear energy, which shows that the true reason behind its adoption of the nuclear program is a military one.

The renowned local author said that Kuwaiti and Gulf diplomacy is being negligent in failing to reveal the Persian danger and warn the peoples of the Gulf region against it. He insisted that Kuwait should join regional or international military alliances despite the possibility that doing so would lead to large-scale losses, saying that even major losses were better than losing everything.

Amir Taheri observes the rumblings elsewhere in the region:

There is no doubt that the current nuclear race in the Middle East is largely prompted by the fear of a revolutionary Iran using an arsenal as a means of establishing hegemony in the region. Iran’s rivals for regional leadership, especially Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are aware of the propaganda appeal of the Islamic Republic’s claim of being ” the first Muslim superpower” capable of defying the West and rivaling it in scientific and technological fields. In that context, Tehran’s development of long-range missiles and the Muslim world’s first space satellite are considered political coups.

Mohamed al Quwaihis, a member of Saudi Arabia’s appointed parliament, the Shura Council, warns of Iran’s growing influence. Addressing the Shura Council earlier this month, he described Iranian interferences in Arab affairs as “overt,” and claimed that Iran is “endeavoring to seduce the Gulf States, and recruit some of the citizens of these countries to work for its interests.”

The Shura devoted a recent session to “the Iranian threat,” insisting that unless Tehran abandoned its nuclear program, Saudi Arabia should lead the Arabs in developing their own “nuclear response.” The debate came just days after the foreign ministry in Riyadh issued a report identifying the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program as the “principal security threat to Arab nations.”

A four-nation Arab summit held in the Saudi capital on March 11 endorsed that analysis, giving the green light for a pan-Arab quest for “a complete nuclear industry.”

This is more commonly known as proliferation.