The Gulf Cooperation Council is calling for international inspectors to be dispatched to Iran to inspect the country’s Bushehr nuclear plant. The declaration comes after a Tuesday 6.3-magnitude earthquake in the area, and the GCC called attention to concerns over radiation leaks:

GCC Secretary-General, Abdulatif al-Zayani, said that Gulf Arab states must have a joint plan to collectively deal with any possible leak from the Iranian facility. “The earthquake that the Iranian city of Bushehr was subject to has raised a great deal of concern among GCC countries and the international community of a possible damage to the Bushehr nuclear reactor that could causing a radioactive leak, God forbid,” Zayani said at the start of the meeting in Riyadh. “The GCC countries have previously warned against the danger of the nuclear reactor of Bushehr and the possible nuclear leak and its harmful effect on the environment in the Gulf,” he added.

Iran brushed off the concerns:

An Iranian nuclear official has dismissed as “baseless” the “commotion” created by the Persian Gulf Arab countries about the safety of Iran’s sole nuclear power plant, located in the southwestern port city of Bushehr. “If these concerns are being expressed from a technical perspective, they can be easily allayed. We have repeatedly said that we are ready to provide experts with any kind of information that is necessary through the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Deputy Director Mohammad Ahmadian told Al-Alam News Network on Sunday.

The GCC call comes at a time of spiking Arab-Iranian tensions. Regional Arab governments have long expressed alarm over Iranian nuclear weapons acquisition, which they fear will provide Tehran immunity to interfere in their domestic affairs and press its regional claims. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have both made the case for attacking Iran’s nuclear installations, and last month Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal emphasized that open-ended negotiations with Iran were unacceptable and would leave the world “in front of a nuclear weapon.”

[Photo: Bernd.Brincken / Wiki Commons]