Bahrain chooses alignment with Israel over submission to Iran
Since the announcement of the Abraham Accords in August 2020, ties between Bahrain and Israel have grown steadily, reaching a milestone last week when an Israeli military aircraft, carrying Defense Minister Benny Gantz, touched down in Manama. It was the first Israeli military plane to fly over Saudi Arabia and land in a Gulf country.
Bahrain has long suffered from Iranian bullying. In 2007, Hussain Shariaatmadari, an aide to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, wrote that Bahrain was once a Persian province that Western powers unlawfully separated from Iran. In 2017, the state-owned daily Iran reiterated this claim, asserting that until 1956 Bahrain had been Iranian, with a 70% Persian-speaking Shiite population. In other words, Bahrain belongs to Iran, and its independence is not acceptable.
Neither history nor demographics supports Tehran’s claims. Today, the majority of Iranians who live on the east bank of the Persian Gulf, under Iranian sovereignty, are ethnic Arab citizens of Iran who suffer under immense discrimination and a policy of Persianization.
An island nation that could just about fit inside the Washington Beltway, Bahrain needs allies. Now it has found in military cooperation with Israel a good way to deter Tehran. Close ties to the Jewish state were once unthinkable for the Arab Gulf monarchies, but Iran has kept up its threats despite mounting evidence that it is driving its adversaries closer together.
In Bahrain, the Israeli defense minister met with top officials, including King Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa and Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al Khalifa. Gantz also signed a memorandum of military cooperation with his Bahraini counterpart Abdullah al Nuaimi.
The memorandum accorded the Israeli navy basing rights in Bahrain, also home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, according to Israeli media reports. David Salama, the Israeli navy chief, implicitly substantiated such reports when he said that cooperation with Bahrain “will bring safe passageway and a secure maritime area for the State of Israel [like it does] for our partners in the U.S. Central Command.”
Cognizant that military cooperation between Bahrain and Israel will make Iranian bullying harder, Tehran-funded media threatened Manama, citing an attack that pro-Iranian militia launched on an alleged Mossad office in Iraqi Kurdistan. State-backed outlets quoted Israeli reports about the basing agreement, while pundits argued that the real added value to Israeli military power would be Bahrain’s proximity to Iran. “Israel will use Bahrain as a platform to conduct its intel operations” directed against Islamist Iran, an analyst wrote.
Only 170 nautical miles separate Bahrain’s Sitra port from the Iranian docks of Bushehr.
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The EU Signed as a Witness to Uphold the Oslo AccordsJonathan Tobin: Why we should care about the fate of Ukraine
Recent policy decisions by the European Union regarding the Israeli-Palestinian dispute indicate profound contradictions, double standards, and hypocrisy.
Being signatories as witnesses to the 1991-3 Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO, together with the United States, Russia, Norway, and Egypt, the EU took upon itself a responsibility to encourage the parties to observe the obligations and commitments encapsulated in the Accords and ensure that they would be duly honored and followed by the parties.
By the same logic, one would expect that those witnesses, all highly involved and active stakeholders in the Middle East peace process, would meticulously ensure that they honor the agreements and refrain from any action that could undermine or frustrate them. The significance of such expectation would be that a witness would seek to assist the parties to fulfill their respective commitments pursuant to the Accords and not encourage one of the parties to violate such commitments.
This would be the obvious responsibility of a witness to such a vital international instrument. Otherwise, why would the EU or any of the other witnesses have added their signatures to the Accords?
Witnesses should refrain from actively seeking to undermine and frustrate the Accords by urging the Palestinian leadership to summarily violate their obligations and thereby hinder the viability and integrity of the Accords.
Even if the EU takes issue with the manner in which Israel or the Palestinian leadership implements or fails to implement the Accords, the EU, as a party seeking to help advance the peace process, should act with the parties to assist in settling any dispute rather than encourage that party to openly and blatantly work to defy the Accords.
Regrettably, this is precisely what the EU is doing in assisting the Palestinian leadership to violate the Oslo Accords by encouraging and financing unauthorized development projects and building in that part of the West Bank area of Judea and Samaria under the control and jurisdiction of Israel.
Large-scale wars like the one that may happen in Ukraine, which was unimaginable in the not-so-distant past, are now very real possibilities. Small countries that looked to international opinion and a strong United States to ensure their independence are now pretty much on their own. And rogue states like Iran can be forgiven for thinking that the United States is committed to appeasing them no matter the cost.
A weak America doesn't just mean a dismal fate for Ukraine. It means a budding Chinese superpower will be further seeking to limit America's influence and undermine its security. It means that after the next Iran deal, Tehran will be emboldened to further aggression and threats against Israel and regional Arab countries alike. And if Americans think all this will have no repercussions for their economic security, then they haven't been paying attention to what's been going on in Europe and Asia.
Given that the United States is in no position to stop Putin, reversing these losses will be difficult. It would mean a reaffirmed commitment to reasserting power in order to save Taiwan, as well as backing away from the appeasement of Iran.
Right now, that seems unimaginable, especially with an American surrender to Iran in the nuclear talks being held in Vienna seeming already a done deal. Nor is it easy to imagine an administration still obsessed with demonizing its domestic political foes and crippled by leftist intellectual fashions that have undermined belief in American exceptionalism being able to assert itself again on the global stage.
The threats to Ukraine will be the least of America's worries if we are now living in a world in which Washington is neither respected nor feared.