The event was a follow-up to a U.S.-led summit in Warsaw in February, which, Netanyahu said at the time, marked “a historic change.”

By World Israel News Staff

The head of the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s counter-terrorism department participated in a two-day security conference in Manama, Bahrain on Monday.

Dana Benvenisti-Gabay joined representatives from about 60 countries at the Working Group on Maritime and Aviation Security conference. Co-hosted by Bahrain, the U.S. and Poland, the event was a follow-up to a U.S.-led summit in Warsaw in February, which, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the time, marked “a historic change.”

“There were 60 foreign ministers and envoys from countries there, including Arab countries with which we do not have relations, who sat together with Israel and took the stand that we set against Iran,” Netanyahu said upon his return home.

“Aviation and maritime security are at the top of the policy agenda in the region,” Bahraini Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa said at the opening of the Manama conference, which also focused on the Iranian threat.

In a tweet, Bahrain’s foreign ministry said that “the meeting is an occasion to exchange views on how to deal with the Iranian menace and to guarantee freedom of navigation.”

“We all must take a collective stand… to take the necessary steps to protect our nation from rogue states, non-state actors and terrorist groups that conduct such attacks and seek to destabilize our globe,” he said. “We must also continue our efforts to halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction and associated technologies and delivery systems.”

“This meeting comes at a critical moment in history,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated in a letter to the conference participants.

“The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and their means of delivery, whether by air or sea, pose a serious threat to international peace and security. Together, we must all be committed to taking the necessary actions to stop countries that continue to pursue WMD at great risk to all of us,” Pompeo said.

At the February conference, U.S. Vice-President Mike Pompeo, speaking with Netanyahu at his side, hailed the event as the dawning of a “new era” and said that “pushing back” against Iran is key.

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The conference staged last week in Warsaw may prove to be a watershed moment in Netanyahu’s decade-long effort to gather international pressure against Iran.

By David Isaac, World Israel News

In Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-fought diplomatic effort to bring about international pressure on Iran there have been many impressive moments. But last week’s Warsaw conference may have been his most successful. There he stood, Israel’s prime minister, in the place of honor surrounded by the representatives of 60 nations, all gathered with a single purpose – to confront the Islamic Republic.

The conference marked “a historic change,” Netanyahu said upon his return to Israel at Sunday’s weekly Cabinet meeting. At Warsaw, no less than four out of five foreign ministers from Arab countries spoke in an open and frank way against Iran.

“There were 60 foreign ministers and envoys from countries there, including Arab countries with which we do not have relations, who sat together with Israel and took the stand that we set against Iran,” Netanyahu said.

The summit was historic also in what was not said. It was the first time at such a high-level Mideast conference that the Palestinian problem was not addressed.

Indeed, at Warsaw, Iran replaced Israel as the Middle East’s bogeyman – only in this case the monster is real. Netanyahu said: “I told them that the Iranian aggression is the main factor undermining the Middle East and the entire world and that we must prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons and block its military entrenchment in Syria. We will continue to act at all times in order to ensure the security of Israel.”

Those Arab states in proximity to the Islamic Republic were ripe for the message. In a leaked video of a closed meeting, Arab officials from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates described Iran as the region’s greatest threat.

Bahrain’s foreign minister, Khalid Al Khalifa, was the most vociferous. “We grew up talking about the Palestine-Israel dispute as the most important issue … But then at a later stage, we saw a bigger challenge. We saw a more toxic one, in fact the most toxic in our modern history, which came from the Islamic Republic, from Iran.”

The conference also accomplished another of its central purposes – to send a message to the European Union that not everyone in that supranational body is happy about its Iran policy.

The E.U.’s leadership recently created a financial mechanism to help European companies bypass U.S. sanctions. The move had the support of the big players, Germany and France, and the U.K. But others had doubts about the wisdom of defying the U.S. and supplying goods to an imperialist Islamic power. Until Warsaw, those countries didn’t have a voice.

Media hostile to U.S. President Donald Trump and Netanyahu tried to portray the conference as a failure. CNN titled it a “diplomatic fumble,” saying it disunified America’s allies, when it in fact did the exact opposite. The New York Times portrayed it as ineffective. The Washington Post dismissed it before it even started.

A better gauge of its effectiveness can be found in the reaction of America’s and Israel’s enemies. The Palestinians went into a tizzy, fully aware how the conference pushed them to the sidelines. They have since launched a campaign to try and unravel the progress made there, denouncing as “traitors” any Arab country that talks with Israel. Hezbollah attacked the conference along the same lines.

Most bizarre was the pathetic attempt by Russia, Turkey and Iran to stage a simultaneous conference. Those countries’ three leaders, sitting together in a transparent effort to create a counterweight to Warsaw, looked downright feeble in comparison to the 60 countries gathered in Poland. They appeared to have been caught flat-footed.

Netanyahu has scored many points against Iran. In Sept. 2018, when he went before the U.N. General Assembly and exposed Iran’s secret nuclear facilities. Then again in April, when he unveiled Iran’s stolen nuclear archives. But the Warsaw conference may prove to be his greatest diplomatic coup yet.

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At a major Mideast summit in Warsaw this week, Arab leaders said the Iranian threat is the region’s most pressing challenge, dismissing the Palestinian issue’s relevance in comparison.

By Associated Press and World Israel News Staff

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Thursday released a video of a closed meeting in which senior Gulf Arab officials supported Israel’s right to defend itself, played down the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and described Iran as the greatest threat to regional peace.

The video provided a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes ties the Israeli leader has built with the Arab world, but which are rarely seen in public. The video was recorded on a mobile device and it was not clear who took it. It was removed from Netanyahu’s social media accounts not long after it was posted.

The 25-minute video showed a series of comments made by officials from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on a closed panel discussion at a U.S.-sponsored security conference in Warsaw. Some 60 nations participated in the gathering, which was focused heavily on countering Iran’s growing influence in the region.

Bahrain’s foreign minister, Khalid Al Khalifa, made some of the toughest comments, saying that Iran is a far bigger threat to regional security than the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“We grew up talking about the Palestine-Israel dispute as the most important issue,” he said. “But then at a later stage, we saw a bigger challenge. We saw a more toxic one, in fact the most toxic in our modern history, which came from the Islamic Republic, from Iran.”

He went on to denounce the “neo-fascist regime” in Tehran, accusing it of plotting attacks in his country and destabilizing Yemen, Syria and Iraq.

‘Every nation has a right to defend itself’

Khalifa continued, “When we come to Israel-Palestine, we had the Camp David agreement. There was Madrid. There were many other ways of solving it, had we stayed on the same path. If it wasn’t for the toxic party [Iran] … [and the] guns, food, [and] soldiers of the Islamic Republic, I think we would have been much closer today in solving this issue with Israel,” Khalifa said, according to i24.

Asked about Israel’s military activity in Syria, the UAE’s Emirati Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, commented, “Every nation has the right to defend itself when it’s challenged by another nation.”

Saudi Arabia’s minister of state for foreign affairs, Adel al-Jubeir, also accused Iran of hurting the Palestinian cause by supporting terror groups battling Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

“Who is supporting Hamas and [Palestinian] Islamic Jihad and undercutting the Palestinian Authority?” asked al-Jubeir, before immediately answering, “Iran.”

Netanyahu did not participate on the panel, but is seen sitting in the audience. Speaking to reporters early Thursday, Netanyahu hinted at the “unfathomabl[y]” friendly atmosphere at the conference.

Iran: the greatest regional threat

Israel has identified Iran as its greatest threat. It has vowed to prevent Iran from establishing a permanent military presence in Syria and has carried out scores of airstrikes on Iranian targets in the neighboring country.

“Once the Palestinian issue took center stage. Now [the Arab states] say that first and foremost the Iranian issue needs to be dealt with,” Netanyahu commented to reporters at the conference, according to an i24 report.

“Four out of five Arab foreign ministers who addressed the conference [on Thursday] spoke strongly and clearly against Iran, saying exactly what I’ve been saying for years. They were as clear as possible about the issue, and Israel’s right to defend itself against Iranian aggression,” he explained.

Netanyahu identified the Arab representatives’ mere decision to remain in the room when he spoke, breaking from standard protocol in the past of getting up and walking out when an Israeli leader speaks, represented “the breaking of a taboo.”

“Here you have Arab foreign ministers, who say that Israelis have the right to defend themselves, and don’t say it in secret but on a stage with 60 other countries present,” he added.

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Arch-terrorist Hassan Nasrallah accused several Gulf states of collaborating with Israel “to conspire against [Iran].”

By World Israel News Staff

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese Islamic terror group Hezbollah, reacted on Saturday to this week’s Mideast summit in Warsaw, Poland, at which Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu joined counterparts from several Arab nations, the European Union, and the United States.

The conference focused on the growing threat posed by Hezbollah’s biggest benefactor, Iran, which bankrolls a number of terror groups throughout the region, including Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Both Hezbollah and Hamas are sworn to Israel’s destruction.

At the summit in Warsaw, Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) expressed opinions in alignment with Israel’s position on the Iranian threat to regional stability and peace. The mere fact that these Arab nations participated in a conference with Israel also represented a shift in policy, providing clear evidence of the warming ties between the Jewish state and other nations in the region.

Several representatives of Arab states also expressed support for Israel’s right to defend itself, and acknowledged that the Palestinian issue’s importance has been eclipsed by the need to address Iranian belligerence.

On Saturday, Nasrallah spoke at an annual event honoring the terror group’s “martyrs,” admitting that the Warsaw summit “brought out into the open Israel’s relations with the Gulf states,” Times of Israel reported.

“We knew about normalization between Israel and Oman and the United Arab Emirates, but at the summit we also clearly saw normalization with the Saudis,” he added.

The Hezbollah chief not only attacked Yemen’s foreign minister for sitting next to Netanyahu at the summit, positing that Iran’s proxy war in Yemen “is an Israeli-American war carried out by Saudi Arabia and the UAE,” he also accused the Arab nations at the summit of being “tools in the hands of” Israel and the U.S., reported the Times.

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