Middle East:US president George Bush has ratcheted up his rhetoric over Iran, lambasting it as "the world's leading sponsor of state terror", and urging America's closest Arab allies to confront it "before it is too late".
Giving the only formal speech of his seven-country Middle East tour in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Mr Bush yesterday accused Tehran of backing Shia groups in Iraq, Hizbullah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestinian territories and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
"Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere," he said in Abu Dhabi, "so the United States is strengthening our long-standing security commitments with our friends in the Gulf and rallying friends around the world to confront this danger before it is too late."
Mr Bush arrived in the UAE after stops in Kuwait and Bahrain, where he visited the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet, three of whose warships were involved in last week's confrontation with Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats in the Strait of Hormuz.
In Israel earlier, Mr Bush had threatened Iran with "serious consequences" if it attacked US vessels. Tehran has repeatedly dismissed the incident as routine and accused an "adventurist" US of deliberately exaggerating it for propaganda purposes.
"Iran is today the world's leading state sponsor of terror," Mr Bush said. "It sends hundreds of millions of dollars to extremists around the world while its own people face repression and economic hardship at home.
"It seeks to intimidate its neighbours with ballistic missiles and bellicose rhetoric. It defies the United Nations and destabilises the region by refusing to be open and transparent about its nuclear programmes and ambitions."
Iran's foreign ministry responded last night by warning him not to "pursue policies of fooling people in the region".
Today, Mr Bush arrives in Saudi Arabia, the main US ally in the region, where King Abdullah has overseen a cautious rapprochement with Tehran in recent months.
Much media comment in the Gulf in the past few days has cautioned the US not to drag the Arabs into a new war with Iran while highlighting Washington's uncritical support for Israel, with its undeclared arsenal of nuclear weapons outside the international non-proliferation regime.
Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said last week: "Saudi Arabia is a neighbour of Iran in the Gulf, which is a small lake. We are keen that harmony and peace should prevail among states of the region."
In what was billed as the central theme of his Abu Dhabi speech, Mr Bush also sought to revive his shortlived Middle East "freedom agenda", widely seen to have been shelved in favour of stability and the status quo in the face of concerns about Islamists and the victory of Hamas in the 2006 Palestinian elections.
Saudi Arabia bans political parties and dynastic rule is the norm elsewhere in the Gulf. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is the largest opposition movement, but is subjected to harassment.
- (Guardian service)