‘Nato-like alliance’ against Iran could be created after Israel peace deal with UAE
ISRAEL’S historic peace deal with the United Arab Emirates could be the first step in forging a bold, Nato-like alliance against the Iranian regime, according to the Jewish state’s former foreign affairs chief.
Dore Gold, Israel’s director general of foreign affairs from 2015 -2016, told The Sunday Telegraph he saw potential parallels between Thursday night’s agreement and post-war Europe.
Under the terms of the peace deal, which was overseen by Donald Trump, the US president, the UAE will sign a series of trade deals and normalise relations with Israel, which in return must suspend its controversial plans to annex parts of the West Bank.
“I think there’s an analogy here to what happened in Western Europe after the Second World War,” said Mr Dore, who served as an adviser to Israeli prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu.
“You had former adversaries, France and Germany, being able to pull together under the America umbrella and form an organisation called Nato. I see the issue of a mutual threat [Iran] providing the basis for cooperation between former enemies.”
His comments offer a sobering dose of reality of what lay behind Israel’s surprise decision to strike the unlikely new alliance, its first with a Gulf state.
Iran is the arch-enemy of Israel but also a growing concern for the Gulf states, in particular the UAE and Saudi Arabia. An ultraconservative Iranian newspaper said on Saturday that the UAE decision has made it a “legitimate target” for pro-Tehran forces.
Mr Gold added that the UAE had a “very big problem with Iran”, in part due to the regime’s takeover in 1971 of a cluster of islands near Emirati territory in the Persian Gulf: Abu Masa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs. But while Israel stands to benefit hugely from normalised relations with a Gulf state, the deal has also laid bare bitter tensions within the Muslim and Arab world.
Though Egypt, Oman and Bahrain have welcomed the deal, Turkey and Iran have condemned it as a betrayal of the Palestinians, who have long demanded that “normal” relations with Israel only take place after the creation of a Palestinian state.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish president, has threatened to recall his ambassador from the UAE in protest, while the Iranian regime described the deal as an act of “strategic stupidity”.
It was speculated that when President Trump said he hoped more Arab countries would follow the UAE he was referring to Saudi Arabia, but the kingdom is yet to address this.
Mansoor Abulhoul, the UAE’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, told The Sunday Telegraph that the prospect of Israeli annexation of the West Bank had spurred them on to negotiate the world’s first peace deal between Israel and a Gulf state. Israel had been planning to annex up to 30 per cent of the West Bank, which is claimed by the Palestinians as their own land, but the proposals drew condemnation from across the Arab world, as well as from Western allies, including Boris Johnson. In response, the Emiratis said they felt an urgent need to engage with the Israelis to avoid what they regard as an illegal land-grab from Palestinian communities.
The Sunday Telegraph can also disclose that a secretive office opened by Israel in the UAE in 2015 played a key role in laying the groundwork for Thursday’s agreement. Israel set up a discrete task force in the headquarters of the International Renewable Energy Agency in Abu Dhabi, manned by the senior diplomat Rami Hatan. At that time, the UAE had no formal diplomatic relations with Israel but sources said it was here that ideas began to form about potentially forging an alliance.
The disclosure suggests that while President Trump has declared himself the architect of the UAE-Israel deal, some of the work was already under way a year earlier.
Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, has also been credited with nurturing the UAE-Israel relationship. Yossi Cohen, the director of Mossad, is said to have secretly visited the UAE several times before the deal was announced. And the key breakthrough – the agreement to delay annexation in return for normalised relations in Israel – was reportedly made by the UAE ambassador to the US at a meeting in June.
The idea was then pounced upon by Jared Kushner, President Trump’s senior Middle East adviser.
Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, said he was also hopeful that the peace deal will lead to a fresh crackdown on Iranian funding of its proxy groups in the region.
“You can see their fingerprints all over the Middle East,” he said, referring to Iran’s funding of proxy groups such as Hizbollah in Lebanon.
“It would be of common interest to try and block the presence of Iranian terror in the region and to block the funds they deliver to their proxies.”
While Israel has framed the peace accord as a golden opportunity to improve diplomatic and trade relationships with Arab countries, the UAE stressed that its most urgent goal was to prevent the annexation process.
‘There’s an analogy here with what happened in Europe after the Second World War. I see the issue of a mutual threat providing the basis for cooperation’