WARSAW — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday hailed as a historic breakthrough the presence of Israeli and Arab officials in the same room at a conference on Middle East security.
At the outset of talks in a sprawling sports stadium, Pompeo and Netanyahu both reflected on the significance of a Wednesday night dinner for representatives of more than 60 countries attending the conference, including Arab countries. Jordan and Egypt already have a peace treaty with Israel. Several other Arab states, particularly those around the Persian Gulf, do not readily advertise to their citizens the friendly diplomacy that already exists with Israel.
Iran, which was not invited to the conference where it will be the subject of much debate and disparagement, has changed that calculation.
“Yesterday was a historical turning point,” Netanyahu told reporters. “In a room of some 60 foreign ministers, the Israeli prime minister and foreign ministers of leading Arab countries stood together, and spoke with unusual force, clarity and unity against a common threat of the Iranian state.”
The Trump administration has sought with little success to rebut the perception that the conference is aimed at vilifying Iran, which this week marked 40 years since the Islamic revolution. U.S. officials have stressed that the session covers a range of topics, including the humanitarian crises in Syria and Yemen. Netanyahu, however, has minced no words, telling reporters in Israel, “The focus of the conference is Iran.”
Pompeo said the two are intrinsically linked.
Standing next to Netanyahu, Pompeo said “pushing back” against Iran is essential to tackling other problems in the region.
“You can’t achieve peace and stability in the Middle East without confronting Iran,” Pompeo said. “It’s just not possible.”
In his opening remarks, Pompeo listed a cross section of issues that the administration usually blames largely on Iran for creating or at least heightening.
“We need action beyond today,” he said. “Syria. Yemen. Proliferation. The peace process. Terrorism. Iran. Cybersecurity. Humanitarian crises. None of the region’s challenges will solve themselves. We must work together for security in the region. No country can afford to remain on the sidelines.”
Pompeo has consistently made clear that all conversations about instability and threats in the Middle East end at Tehran’s doorstep.
“This gathering is certainly about Middle East peace and stability,” he told PBS NewsHour. “You can’t talk about that without talking about the threat from the Islamic Republic of Iran, whether it’s Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis — I call them the three H’s — whether it’s their work against the Iraqi government, trying to harm the independence and sovereignty of Iraq, whether it’s what they’re doing in Syria today.
Vice President Pence and Netanyahu also will meet on the sidelines of the session Thursday, and plan to tour a memorial to the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
Major Gulf Arab states are attending, and the Trump administration plans to highlight warming relations between some Gulf states and Israel.
Ahead of the session, Trump administration officials said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be one topic, but not the focus. President Trump’s long-planned peace plan is expected within months, although it has been delayed repeatedly. Jared Kushner, Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, attended the session with Pence, and was scheduled to give a talk on the “deal of a century” peace plan he has been working on for almost two years.
Even as the conference started, it remain somewhat cloaked in uncertainty. Officials have yet to release a full list of the countries sending representatives, and their ranks. Some key Europesan countries said they were sending lower-level diplomats out of concern the event would be used primarily to excoriate Iran.
Major European powers were not consulted before Pompeo announced the summit last month. The agenda was broadened after allies suggested that the Trump administration would end up showcasing division rather than unity over Iran, European and U.S. diplomats said. The United States and Poland shelved tentative plans to circulate an agreement that conference attendees would all sign, two diplomats said.
Aaron David Miller, a former State Department official involved with several conferences dedicated to the Middle East, said the Warsaw meeting is likely to be more show than substance.
“I don’t think you can bring 70 countries together with a loose set of objectives, called Middle East peace and security, and expect to have real concrete results achieved,” he said. “That does not mean that the show isn’t worth something. But the bigger stage creates a bigger chance you highlight not American power and strength but American indecision and fecklessness.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has called the two-day meeting a “desperate anti-Iran circus,” and has kept up a steady stream of tweets mocking it in English.
This story was originally published by Washington Post
via USAHint.com
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