Kuwait City skyline. Photo: wiki commons.

Now is the time to launch an Israeli-Gulf alliance that will act as a counterbalance to the growing regional threat from Iran, a columnist for a Kuwait government newspaper has declared.

“I repeat my call to form a Israel-Gulf friendship society, as a first step towards developing and strengthening [our] ties with the friendly state of Israel in the domains of politics, diplomacy, trade, education and military and civilian cooperation,” wrote Abdallah Al-Hadlaq in Al Watan, according to media watchdog the Middle East Media Research Institute.

Not to be confused as an act of diplomatic or historical rectification, Hadlaq included the caveat that an Israeli-Gulf rapprochement should occur amid a severing of all ties with regional foe Iran, especially as the Persian country has been linked to attacks in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait, as well as backing aggressive anti-government Houthi rebels in Yemen, the beleaguered Arab state flanking the southwestern corridor of the Arabian peninsula.

He said improved communications — presumably, he means the Internet — have allowed Arab Muslims to see that their true “bitter” enemy lies in the “Persian Iranians.”

Hadlaq repeatedly called the Iranian regime “fascist” that hides behind a “religious guise,” and warned that the Islamic Republic to the north would have no qualms about using nuclear weapons — should it come to possess them — in a future conflict with the Gulf Arab states, unlike Israel, which he noted has already waged “five” nuclear-free wars with Arab nations.

He noted that “Shia Persian Iranian militias” are currently engaged in some of the most ferocious battlegrounds in an already boiling region: in Syria backing the government of Bashar al-Assad, Iraq and Lebanon, where arguably its most powerful and well-armed proxy, Hezbollah, resides.

Hadlaq’s article was published shortly after a red-carpet visit by Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to oil-rich Kuwait meant to deepen ties with the highly suspicious Gulf Arab states.