Thousands of people demonstrated in Tehran on Friday to protest a proposed union of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.The plan, floated last December, was Saudi Arabia's idea, not America's. And the smaller Gulf states are not too keen about it anyway.
The authorities had urged citizens to protest the American plan to annex Bahrain to Saudi Arabia and express their anger against the “lackey regimes of Al-Khalifa and Al-Saud”.
Media reports said demonstrators in the capital, many brandishing the Bahraini flag, shouted "death" to America, Israel, the "traitors" Al-Saud and Al-Khalifa. Official media also reported protests in other cities.
This week’s Friday prayer leader Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi said the "US-Zionist plot" to create a union between will fail. "Recently ... (Riyadh and Manama) came up with this plot to annex Bahrain to Saudi Arabia ... They call it a union but they want Bahrain to lose its identity instead of giving in to its people's demands," the cleric said on state radio.
"This is US-Zionist conspiracy and they should know that the Muslim people of the world and the Iranians will not tolerate this plot ... Saudi Arabia did not prevail by its military presence there, and will gain nothing in this plot except disgrace," he added.
But this hysterical reaction by Iran (and its Lebanese proxies) is interesting, mostly because of Iran's own territorial designs on Bahraini territory.