Manama: Kuwaiti lawmakers urged the government to be “fully ready” for an invasion by neighbouring Iran.
The call by the MPs was prompted by a media report attributed to Mohammad Karim Abedi, a member of Iran’s Majlis (Parliament) National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, in which he allegedly said that Tehran “had the right to interfere in Kuwait to protect the Shiites there, just like Gulf countries explained their interference in Bahrain to protect Sunnis there.”
“The committee studied and heard reports about the measures taken to protect Ahl Al Bait in Kuwait in case there is a security issue,” the Majlis official reportedly said.
“Iran is a military power now and it has long arms that can reach wherever it wants.”
The claims highlighted by the Kuwaiti media have sparked a flurry of angry reactions from lawmakers, from the dissolved 2012 parliament and the reinstated 2009 legislative body, expressing anger with Tehran and urging the government to address the issue decisively.
However, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, Chairman of the Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, on Saturday “categorically dismissed a report about Iran’s interference in Kuwait as “politically-tainted fabricated claim”.
“Kuwait is a friend and neighbour of the Iranian nation and government and we respect this Islamic and neighbouring country,” Boroujerdi said, quoted by Fars News Agency.
In March 2011, troops from the Peninsula Shield, the military arm of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), were called in by Bahrain to help with addressing unrest in the country.
Tehran denounced the move, saying that it amounted to an invasion of Bahrain, but Manama rejected Iran’s stance as “blatant interference in its domestic affairs’ and said that the call was under a GCC agreement for mutual protection, just like Article 5 within the North Atlantic Treaty Organisaton (Nato).
Tehran also opposed a move by some GCC states to turn their cooperation alliance founded in 1981 into a union, as urged by King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz in Saudi Arabia in December.
In October, Abedi said that Iran was capable of neutralising Saudi Arabia militarily if it chose to do so.
“Iran’s military forces have the ability to strip Saudi Arabia of its security whenever it wants and Saudi Arabia will not be capable of responding,” he said in response to Riyadh’s accusation that Iran was behind the plot to assassinate Adel Al Jubair, the Saudi ambassador to the US. “Saudi Arabia has to face the consequences of the accusations it levelled against Iran,” he was quoted as saying.
