Turkey and Iran condemn UAE’S peace deal with Israel

RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN, the Turkish president, has threatened to sever diplomatic ties with the United Arab Emirates after the Gulf state signed a peace deal with Israel.

“I gave an order to the foreign minister. I said we could suspend diplomatic relations with the Abu Dhabi administration or withdraw our ambassador,” Mr Erdogan told reporters yesterday.

As part of the deal, announced by President Donald Trump on Thursday, the UAE would become the first Gulf state to normalise relations with Israel, which in return is expected to suspend plans for annexation of the West Bank.

However, the historic peace deal has laid bare tensions between the Middle East’s former imperial powers and youthful, oil-rich nations in the Gulf.

Yesterday, Tehran condemned the UAE’S decision to normalise ties with Israel as an “act of strategic stupidity”, while Ankara said history would never forgive the Gulf state for its “hypocritical behaviour”.

“History and the conscience of the region’s peoples will not forget and never forgive this hypocritical behaviour of the UAE, betraying the Palestinian cause for the sake of its narrow interests,” said a statement by the foreign ministry of Turkey.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the foreign ministry of Iran said: “The oppressed people of Palestine and all the free nations of the world will never forgive the normalising of relations with the criminal Israeli occupation regime and the complicity in its crimes.”

It also emerged yesterday that the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad is due to lead a delegation to the UAE for further discussions on the deal.