Khalifa dismissed the country's opposition movement as disunited and said the threat of Iran had compelled him to call in foreign troops to crush last year's uprising. “In a sense there is no ‘opposition' in Bahrain, as the phrase implies one unified block with the same views,” the king said extracts from an interview with Der Spiegel. “Such a phrase is not in our constitution, unlike say the United Kingdom. We only have people with different views and that's okay,” he said in the article to be published Monday. The king said the protesters' refrain “Down with Hamad”, sounded by trumpets and car horns and chanted at rallies, was simply a case of bad manners and no reason to imprison people. “It's just a case of manners. But when they shout ‘Down with the king and up with Khamenei' that's a problem for national unity,” he said. The king said he brought in emergency law to protect women and expatriates, some of whom were attacked. “Also our women were very scared and it is the duty of a gentleman to protect women, so I had to protect them,” he said. The king told Der Spiegel he had called in Gulf Cooperation Council military help, mainly in the form of Saudi troops, to protect Bahrain's “strategic installations ... in case Iran would be more aggressive”.
