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Defense Minister Benny Gantz visited the United States Navy’s 5th Fleet base in Bahrain on Thursday, hailing ties between the three countries amid growing threats from Iran.
“This [cooperation] is a security need of the first order in light of the growing challenges on the maritime front in particular and in the region in general,” Gantz said, speaking in front of the USS Cole, an American warship that the US said it would send to the UAE to help protect it from the ongoing Houthi attacks.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz in front of the USS Cole in English hails ties with the US and Bahrain pic.twitter.com/BSxbjluwNi
— Judah Ari Gross (@JudahAriGross) February 3, 2022
One of the key topics of conversation was ensuring a safe passageway through the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, a significant source of concern for Israel in light of recent attacks on Israeli-owned vessels, allegedly by Iran, as part of an ongoing “shadow war” being waged between Jerusalem and Tehran at sea.
Gantz offered to take part in joint operations to help defend against threats posed by the Islamic Republic and its proxies in the region.
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The US State Department rejected a new report by Amnesty International that accused Israel of “apartheid.”
In the report, the human rights group alleges that Israel has maintained “a system of oppression and domination” over the Palestinians dating back to the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948.
“The [US State] department’s own reports have never used such terminology,” spokesperson Ned Price said in a press conference, noting that it “rejects the view that Israel’s actions constitute apartheid,” adding that the United States “promotes respect for human rights throughout the world, including in Israel and the Palestinian territories.”
Regarding the report, US Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides tweeted: “Come on, this is absurd. That is not language that we have used and will not use.”
Come on, this is absurd. That is not language that we have used and will not use. https://t.co/DUnplInqCH
— Ambassador Tom Nides (@USAmbIsrael) February 1, 2022
Price added that “it is important as the world’s only Jewish state that the Jewish people must not be denied their right to self-determination, and we must ensure there isn’t a double standard being applied.”
The report, which accused Israel of treating Palestinians as an inferior race, was roundly condemned by Israel’s leaders.
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Israel will surround itself with a defensive “laser wall,” with new missile interception technology to be ready within a year, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced in a speech at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
The IDF will begin using the laser interception system experimentally and later operationally, starting in the southern part of the country.
“This will allow us, in the medium- to long-term, to surround Israel with a laser wall that will defend us from missiles, rockets, UAVs and other threats that will essentially take away the strongest card our enemies have against us,” Bennett said.
Israel will offer the laser technology to its regional allies that are also facing threats from Iran and its proxies, the prime minister said.
“The campaign to weaken Iran has begun,” Bennett, adding: “This campaign is in all dimensions: nuclear, economic, cyber, open and secret actions, alone and in cooperation with others. The weaker Iran is, the weaker its proxies are. The hungrier the octopus is, the more its tentacles shrivel.”
Relatedly, Israel is taking part in a regional US-led naval exercise. For the first time, the Jewish state is publicly joining Saudi Arabia and Oman, two countries it has no diplomatic relations with.
The International Maritime Exercise 2022 (IMX 22) includes around 60 countries and comes amid heightened Gulf tensions after missile attacks on the United Arab Emirates by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement, including a foiled attack aimed at a base hosting US forces.
Israel normalized relations with Gulf states the UAE and Bahrain in 2020, brought together by shared worries about Iran, and first held a joint naval drill with those two countries in November.
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Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) came out against the Biden Administration’s efforts to reenter the Iran nuclear deal.
“At this point, we seriously have to ask what exactly are we trying to salvage?” said Menendez from the Senate floor.
Menendez is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and will have considerable oversight over the reentry of the United States into the 2005 accord that is based on providing sanctions relief in return for an Iranian rollback of its nuclear program.
Menendez said he was initially optimistic about Biden’s plan. However, with Tehran proving to be recalcitrant, especially since the election last year of a hard-line government under President Ebrahim Raisi, Menendez now wonders what the point is of continued negotiations to reenter the deal.
“I have yet to hear any parameters of ‘longer’ or ‘stronger’ terms or whether that is even a feasible prospect,” he said in an hour-long speech.
Menendez called on the White House to apply greater pressure on Tehran, something the administration has been reluctant to do.
The Israeli government is opposed to the Biden Administration’s efforts to rejoin the nuclear deal.
Recommended Reading
- Amnesty International: No Double Standard in Accusing Israel, but Not China, of Apartheid (Lazar Berman, Times of Israel)
- Drop the Goldberg Name You Co-opted, Whoopi — You Don’t Deserve It (John Podhoretz, New York Post)
- Finance Minister Liberman’: World on Verge of Anarchy, Superpowers Must Act Now (Yaakov Katz and Gil Hoffman, Jerusalem Post)
- Former US Ambassador David Friedman Warned by White House: ‘Don’t Be So Jewish’—Report (Jewish News Syndicate)
- Israeli Companies to Advertise During NFL Super Bowl (Jewish News Syndicate)
