For Mr. Netanyahu, who is running for re-election in two months while facing the possibility of indictment on corruption charges, the meeting is a major opportunity. He hopes to use it to drive home the idea that he alone has the stature and ability to confront threats to Israel and to show that he is opening relations with the Sunni Arab states that also have an enmity for Tehran.
On Thursday morning, with Mr. Pompeo at his side, Mr. Netanyahu said that the gathering provided an opportunity to show that an “Israeli prime minister and the foreign ministers of the leading Arab countries stood together and spoke with unusual force, clarity and unity against the common threat of the Iranian regime.”
He added: “I think this marks a change, an important understanding of what threatens our future, what we have to do to secure it.”
That goal — using Iran as the common adversary to unite Israel and the Arab states with which it has fought two wars — appears enough for the Trump administration at the Warsaw meeting. Brian Hook, Mr. Pompeo’s special envoy for Iran issues, said in an interview: “This meeting shows that Arab states and Israel increasingly recognize the shared threats they face. Obviously, they have their differences, but there’s no question that Iran’s aggression in the region has brought Israel and the Arab world closer together.”
The session comes just as the United States expanded sanctions against Tehran, and after The New York Times reported that the United States had reinvigorated a long-running program to sabotage Iran’s missile and space-rocket launches. That effort got new life when Mr. Pompeo served as the C.I.A. director in Mr. Trump’s first year in office.
Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser who is developing a Middle East peace plan, convened a gathering on Thursday morning attended by Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Pompeo and 150 others that united some strange bedfellows in the name of isolating Iran. Officials from Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were seated at a table on one side of the room, while officials including Mr. Kushner, Mr. Pompeo, Mr. Netanyahu and Abdul Malik al-Mekhlafi, the Yemeni foreign minister, were seated on the other.
Mr. Kushner took 45 minutes of questions largely related to the Trump administration’s coming peace plan for the Middle East, which he said would be unveiled after the Israeli elections on April 9, an administration official said.
Source : Nytimes
