Manama: Bahrain’s foreign minister has challenged an Egyptian journalist and author to either prove his allegations about Arab-Iranian negotiations over Bahrain and the UAE islands or keep his mouth shut.
“Hassanain Haykal cites only the dead and the deceased,” Shaikh Khalid Bin Ahmad Al Khalifa said. “If he has one single document that proves his allegations about Bahrain and the UAE islands, let him present it. Otherwise, he should fall silent,” the minister posted on Twitter.
Haykal, a former editor-in-chief of the Cairo daily Al Ahram and a close companion of Egyptian President Jamal Abdul Nasser, claimed in an interview last week that he attended the Arab-Iranian negotiations over the future of some of the Gulf states as they prepared to announce their independence in the early 1970s.
The 90-year-old journalist alleges the Arabs accepted a deal with the Shah of Iran to keep Bahrain as an Arab state in exchange for the three UAE islands, Abu Mousa, the Greater Tunb, and the Lesser Tunb.
Iran has repeatedly claimed the three islands were part of its territories, an allegation that has always been rejected by the UAE and its fellow Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member countries – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, as well as other Arab countries.
The UAE has often called for a diplomatic settlement of the issue by taking it to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, but the Iranians have invariably refused the proposal.
Iran has often claimed Bahrain as an Iranian province. However, the dispute was settled in 1970 when Bahrainis, in a United Nations poll on whether they preferred independence or Iranian control, insisted on their Arab identity and the independence and sovereignty of their country.
The insistence by the overwhelming majority prompted the international community to officially support Bahrain and the end of the Iranian claims to the islands.
But despite the outcome of the independence survey, radical Iranians continue to claim that Bahrain should be “integrated” into Iran, often causing tension between the two countries.
Bilateral relations plummeted in 2011 as both countries pulled out their ambassadors.
Although Bahrain reinstated its top diplomat in Tehran, Iran has yet to reciprocate.
