PM Netanyahu meets with VPOTUS Pence. Illustrative. Photo courtesy of Amos Ben-Gershom (Israeli GPO)
It’s a busy season of diplomacy for Israel against Iran, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Poland last week for a conference with Arab and Western nations discussing the threat from Tehran, and this week he will be in Poland’s neighbor Russia to discuss how to keep combatting that threat. Netanyahu, in comments on Sunday released by his office, said he would be in Moscow on Thursday to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and converse on “the continued strengthening of the coordination mechanism in order to prevent friction between the IDF and the Russian military” in Syria.
Israel has repeatedly bombed targets in Syria in an effort to keep Iran and it’s terror ally Hezbollah from expanding their threat against Israel in the north. Russia is also militarily involved in Russia acting on behalf of the Syrian regime in the civil war there, making coordination key to avoid direct conflict between Israeli and Russian forces.
Said Netanyahu, “These talks are very important and are part of our continuing effort to ensure freedom of action for the State of Israel against Iran and its proxies, which declare their intention of using Syria as a front in their war to destroy Israel.”
That concern was top of mind last week in the Middle East peace and security conference in Warsaw, where Netanyahu met with top American leaders and participated alongside multiple Arab nations to focus on the danger Iran poses to the region. “There was an historic change at this conference of great importance to Israel: 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,” said Netanyahu to the Israeli cabinet on Sunday.
“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.”
Netanyahu wasn’t the only leader sounding a warning about Iran. United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made it clear that peace in the Middle East was impossible without addressing Iran’s malignant activities in comments with Netanyahu released by the State Department.
Meanwhile, US Vice President Mike Pence delivered a scathing speech in Warsaw against Iran’s acts of terror and violent rhetoric against Israel, which was published to the White House website. The second-highest-ranking official in the US government then expressed similar concerns in a speech in Germany on Saturday. According to a transcript of the comments also on the White House website, Pence summarized the Warsaw meeting in stating, “It was remarkable to see leaders from across the region agreeing that the greatest threat to peace and security in the Middle East is the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
Not surprisingly, when recapping the Warsaw event to the cabinet on Sunday, Netanyahu noted that “the bond between Israel and the US is stronger than ever.”
(By Joshua Spurlock, www.themideastupdate.com, February 17, 2019)