The United States held a secret meeting last March in Egypt with senior officials from the Israel Defense Forces and military chiefs from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Egypt, and Jordan over the Iranian threat, according to a Sunday report by The Wall Street Journal.
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According to the report, IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi, his Saudi counterpart Fayyad bin Hamed Al-Ruwaili, and military officials from Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates met in the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.
The talks were described as the first steps towards regional cooperation and covered aerial threats posed by Iran, including drones, and how to defend against them.
Sources close to the meetings told The Wall Street Journal that participants agreed in principle on a mechanism to communicate immediate threats via phone and computer as a precursor to government-level involvement.
The report further noted that such cooperation between Israel and Arab states – especially Saudi Arabia and Qatar – was unthinkable before the signing of the landmark Abraham Accords and in light of concerns over Iranian aggression. It was also made possible thanks to the decision by former US President Donald Trump's administration to have Israel join the Central Command.
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Attacks by Iranian proxies against oil facilities in Saudi Arabia and the UAE caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage in 2019. The attacks revealed the inability of those countries' air forces to contend with the threat of drone attacks.
US President Joe Biden is slated to travel to the Middle East for visits to Israel, the West Bank, and Saudi Arabia in mid-July.
Topics on his agenda reportedly range from Israel-Saudi relations to the formation of an Israeli-Arab military alliance.
Meanwhile, efforts toward normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel are still in the works. In late May, Axios reported that the US was secretly mediating a deal between Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Egypt that might lead to the normalization of relations.
i24NEWS contributed to this report.
