Iran lashed out at the United Arab Emirates Tuesday, marking an escalation in a war of words over three disputed islands that has been growing increasingly heated since last spring. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast threatened to downgrade ties with the UAE over competing claims to the islands, which are located in the Strait of Hormuz and which Iran has controlled since 1971 but which are claimed by the UAE. The territorial dispute erupted into crisis last April, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited one of the islands, prompting an emergency meeting by the foreign ministers of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council. The Sunni GCC states, as well as other Arab states in the region, have rung increasingly explicit and shrill alarm bells over Iran’s nuclear weapons program, arguing that nuclear weapons will give Iran immunity to take over disputed territory it claims for itself, including the entire nation of Bahrain. In July 2010 the UAE’s ambassador to the United States publically made the case that the benefits of bombing Iran’s nuclear installations outweighed the costs, and cables emerged later that year indicating that Saudi Arabia had privately urged U.S. officials to strike.

[Photo: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff / Flickr]