The Place of Dead Roads

From NBC, United Arab Emirates: Friend or foe?

Can a Dubai company be trusted to run American ports?
By Andrea Mitchell

...Another problem is rampant smuggling through Dubai’s port. A criminal complaint, obtained by NBC News, says the U.A.E.’s director of customs “would not allow” a U.S. special agent to detain a shipment of nuclear equipment heading to Pakistan in 2003 and is still permitting nuclear equipment to get to Iran.

“Unless Dubai is willing to impose restrictions on what Iran can buy, there’s no hope of stopping the Iranian bomb program,” says Gary Milhollin, the director of the University of Wisconsin’s Project on Nuclear Arms Control...

Please note the tense of the verbs here. The UAE is currently helping the Iranian government get nuclear supplies. Since the Bush adminstration is making so much noise about Iran's nuclear ambitions, why do they want to help the Dubai government? I would have thought Bush would have taken his own words to heart when he said

"Over time it's going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable for inactivity. You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror."

Reading this quote and knowing the UAE is at worst helping, or at least doing nothing, to help Iran get nuclear equipment, I would have thought there would be calls for a naval blockade between the UAE and Iran. Not the desire to help the UAE's DP World become more important the shipping business.

But I guess if they did this, then it would become harder and harder for the current US adminstration to make the case for going to war with Iran.