Kuwaiti police have discovered that some Iranian commercial ships were equipped to eavesdrop on civil and military communications while docked in Kuwait. The scheme was quite clever, in that the Iranian cargo and fishing boats, which have long called at Kuwaiti ports, were modified for the spy work so that you could not see any differences on the outside of the boats. The Iranian ships appeared to have the usual radio and radar antennas of coastal shipping. But on closer examination, one found a lot of additional gear. There were a number of these electronic monitoring boats, as they needed to move in and out of Kuwaiti ports, actually delivering and picking up cargo, to avoid detection. When a spy ship had to leave, it would radio for its "replacement" to come in and keep up the monitoring. Iran denies everything, and some Kuwaiti officials have also denied the allegations.

For five centuries, Kuwait has survived, even though surrounded by powerful neighbors, by making the right friends, and avoiding offending the wrong people. Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia would all like to just absorb Kuwait, and its oil. At the moment, Iran is the primary danger. Before 2003, it was Iraq, and over the centuries, the Ottoman Turk empire and the Bedouin tribes of Arabia were serious threats.