Gulf states believe Israel will destroy Iran's nuclear programme rather than allow it to acquire an atomic bomb, an adviser to the Kuwaiti government and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) said on Tuesday.

If Iran did build the bomb, said adviser Sami Alfaraj, then the Jewish state might be one of the countries -- along with the United States and Pakistan -- Gulf Arab nations would ask to provide a "nuclear umbrella" to guarantee their security.

Alfaraj, president of the Kuwait Centre for Strategic Studies, said Israel might bomb Iranian nuclear facilities in the same way it destroyed Iraq's main atomic reactor at Osirak with a military strike in 1981.

"I believe in something on the same Iraqi model...We are assuming in the Gulf that Israel will take it out. We are not saying that, but Israel would," Alfaraj told Reuters at the start of an analyst 'roadshow' organised by Realite-EU, an independent body which tracks Middle East security developments...