Farewell, Mr
to try to be part of the dialogue, asking how do we make these changes together, how do we manage to stay on the same page?”
I once made a tour of London embassies and asked the same question of the ambassadors of the day: “How do you manage to put aside your own views from those of the government you represent?” The answers were not all the same. To Ambassador Taub, it presented no problem. “It is easier than you might imagine. I have considered my main job here is to make people understand — where the Israeli people are and where the Israeli leadership is — as thoughtfully as I can. It is not usually a question of different opinions.
“Usually we have very thoughtful discussions about it. I don’t find an enormous problem there.”
The co-operation of which he speaks has been achieved in the midst of the whole series of Middle East crises: Gaza last year. ISIS this and Iran always — but particularly now.
The Middle East is, as he recognises, in turmoil. But is everything as black as it seems? Or is there a silver lining? “The answer is both. We are worried, yes, but there is, perhaps not a silver lining, but in a very complicated situation, another side — the challenge is to think long and hard about how we can take advantage of Loyal: Daniel Taub meets the Queen in 2011 [the other side of the situation]. We have to treat the region with a certain amount of humility in that we can’t dictate what is going on there. We have to focus on what are the particular aspects of what are important to Israel and how we can influence them. The agreement with Iran takes us into a new phase — a phase that is of extraordinary concern for us.
“If Iran sticks to the agreement, in which case, [the idea that] in more than a decade the nuclear capabilities of Iran will be achieved, causes us concern. We are worried if it doesn’t stick to its agreement and we are worried about the implications beyond the nuclear issue. We are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars starting to flow into Iranian coffers, and going to its proxies Hizbollah and Hamas.
“At the same time, there are a number of points of opportunity… If we look on the brighter side, there are two things that stick out — the surprising resilience of our peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, which have weathered the turbulence in the region in a remarkable way.’’
And then there is the issue that, hitherto, Israel has not officially stressed all that much. “We are seeing a quiet alignment of interests with a lot of countries —Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Egypt and Jordan.