When you live in a neighborhood with a particularly loud, obnoxious family right across the street, challenges exist. Especially if that neighbor tends to bully and make demands on passersby. The challenges usually are overcome through avoidance.
Such is the case with Iran’s neighbor, across the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf, the United Arab Emirates, an American ally.
While the clamor continues in Iran for a nuclear program under the guise of domestic energy production, official Iranian media outlets published a June 10 commentary titled “The Necessity for the Islamic World to have the Atomic Bomb.” The state-controlled media noted that “Yes, having a nuclear weapon is a right” because “America is the main enemy of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
One of Iran’s latest threats has been to close the Strait of Hormuz, the narrowed waterway that measures only 21 miles from shore to shore and connects the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman leading into the Indian Ocean. This navigable stretch is the access point for about 20 percent of the world’s oil that is exported from the Persian Gulf area.
While its yapping, mouthy neighbor has been rattling sabers in response to sanctions due to its nuclear pursuits, the United Arab Emirates, home to an international business center, Dubai, and Fujairah, one of the world’s busiest maritime refueling stops, has been outsmarting the tyrant.