DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Dec. 10 (UPI) -- The rhetoric of U.S. and Arab officials over their divergent policies toward Iran has become curiously more heated since the release last week of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear ambitions.

This is odd. The NIE claim that Iran's nuclear weapons program was suspended four years ago should have been, in Arab eyes, a signal that the prospect of a U.S. airstrike against Iran was off the table, and business could resume as usual.

That has not been the way the Americans see it. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has been attending a security conference in Bahrain, the Gulf headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, has been sounding even tougher than usual about Iran's regional role.

"There can be little doubt that their destabilizing foreign policies are a threat to the interests of the United States, to the interests of every country in the Middle East, and to the interests of all countries within the range of the ballistic missiles Iran is developing," Gates said. "The United States and the international community must continue -- and intensify -- our economic, financial and diplomatic pressures in Iran."

This will not be an easy sell, but Gates has been warning Gulf state rulers and other Bush administration officials have warned U.S. allies in Europe that a sharp new crackdown is coming on Iran's commercial and financial links. To understand why this should be, look no further than the latest issue of Computerworld Magazine, which produces blowups of the shipping documents that suggest Iran's new supercomputer came through the United Arab Emirates.