US President Joe Biden's forthcoming trip to Isreal, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Gulf Cooperation Council monarchs is meant to expand the scope of normalisation between Israel and the Arab world while using ‘Iranian threat’ as common ground.
More Arab nations are looking to make gestures to improve relations with Israel and the US president visit next month is vital to the mutual relations, a senior US official said on Wednesday as per media reports.
“We are working, in the space that is not in the public domain, with a couple of other countries. And I think you’ll see some interesting things around the time of the president’s visit,” Barbara Leaf, the top US diplomat for the Middle East, said
The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco in 2020 became the first Arab states in decades to normalise relations with Israel as part of the so-called Abraham Accords which former President Donald Trump considered a signature foreign policy achievement.
Photograph From Abraham Accord
Before the ‘Abraham Accord’ only two Arab countries had official ties with Israel – Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994.
The Palestinian leadership condemned the UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan normalisation deals as a “treacherous stab to the Palestinian cause”.
“Arab nations that normalised ties with Israel last year have “sinned” and should reverse such moves,” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had said on the accord.
However, US diplomat to Middle east said that the meetings aim to deepen cooperation on areas including water, tourism, health and food security.
"We are trying to put Iran under siege both security-wise and policy-wise, because Iran is a threat to the entire region, not only Israel," said last week Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid.
"Therefore all measures that we are taking in the region, especially around a visit as important as President Biden's visit to Israel and Saudi Arabia, have to be considered as part of this effort."
Both Israel and Saudi Arabia have opposed faltering international efforts to revive a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers which was left in tatters by the US' unilateral 2018 exit under Biden's predecessor Donald Trump.