TheAltWorld An Arab NATO for a war on Iran
Why did the US summon five Arab army chiefs for secret talks with their Israeli counterpart?
While the Israeli army was escalating its war of annihilation and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip with the direct military and political support of the US, its chief of staff Gen. Halevi Herzi reportedly held an unpublicised meeting with the army chiefs of five Arab countries. According to the Axios website, which is reliable and well connected to the White House, the talks were held in Bahrain on Monday and convened by the head of the US military’s Central Command Gen. Michael Kurilla.
It was striking the head of the Saudi army took part in this secret gathering along with his counterparts from Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, and host-state Bahrain. Equally striking was that it was held just two days after the Nusseirat massacre in which 270 Palestinian were killed and 700 maimed.
It was no surprise that Bahrain, Jordan, Egypt, and the UAE attended this conclave. All four countries have normalised relations with the Israeli occupier state as part of fraudulent and duplicitous US-imposed ‘peace’ agreements. But it did come as a surprise — indeed, a shock — that they were joined by the chief of staff of Saudi Arabia, a country that has not normalised ties, at least not officially.
We waited in vain for more than two days after the report was published for any of the five named Arab states to deny or comment on it. But it was implicitly confirmed by an official Bahraini announcement on Thursday that Kurilla, the meeting’s orchestrator, was received by the King of Bahrain at his palace in Manama.
Many serious questions need to be asked about the real reasons for the meeting, its timing, its objectives, and the roles allocated, individually or collectively, to the five Arab armies that were represented.
Some preliminary answers can be gleaned:
— The participation of Israel’s chief of staff at such a high-level meeting with five Arab counterparts affirms that the normalisation process is continuing unhindered, and has even gained pace despite the genocidal war on Gaza.
— For Egypt’s army chief to sit down with his Israeli opposite number after he oversaw his army’s occupation of the Salaheddin (Philadelphi) corridor gives the impression that this move, which violates the Camp David and Oslo accords, was made with a prior understanding between the Egyptian and Israeli sides.
— Leaks about this emergency meeting’s agenda said it focused on joint air defence and cooperation against drone and missile attacks. That suggests preparations are being made for an attack on Iran or other members of the Axis of Resistance, including coordinating defences against retaliatory strikes and ensuring no Iranian missiles reach Israel.
— The US is clearly keen to repeat the grave precedent that was set when a number of Arab states, especially Jordan’s air defences, helped intercept the Iranian missiles fired last month in retaliation for Israel’s bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus.
— The IAEA reported that over the past three weeks Iran has installed eight groups of 174 centrifuges at its uranium enrichment plan at Fordow. This development has been portrayed as posing a strategic threat to Israel, and could be exploited by the US to rally its allies behind an early attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities.
— A joint US-Israeli-Arab ‘NATO’ is taking shape to confront the Axis of Resistance and its fighting forces, especially Iran, as a prelude to expanding hostilities on various fronts, maybe very soon. The spark could be lit in South Lebanon, or in the Red Sea where Yemeni interceptions of Israeli and allied shipping have become a serious problem for the US and its allies and even a threat to its naval forces. Perhaps the choice of Bahrain, headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet, as the meeting’s venue was no coincidence.
— The holding of this meeting, at such a senior level, reaffirms that the governments involved have no regard for public opinion in their own countries, which is seething with anger at the massacres in Gaza, and are totally submissive to US and Israeli dictates.
But it is not they who will draw the map of the region. It is being drawn by the resistance in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq. Israel, who these regimes banked on to protect them, is being defeated, and this defeat signals the beginning of the end of overbearing US influence in the Middle East.
The leaders who sent their army chiefs to the meeting out of fear of the US stick and in obeisance to its orders are leading their countries towards a terrifying future.
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