newspaper said “The Wall Street JournalThe United States held a secret meeting of senior military officials from Israel and six Arab countries in Sharm el-Sheikh last March, to explore how they could coordinate against Iran’s growing capabilities, whether missile or drone capabilities.
The newspaper quoted officials in the United States and the region as saying that the commander of the US Central Command, Frank McKenzie, met with senior military officers from Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Jordan, and the UAE and Bahrain sent officials to attend the meeting.
The “Wall Street Journal” says that the Sharm el-Sheikh talks came on the heels of secret discussions in a working group between representatives from Middle Eastern countries that discussed hypothetical scenarios on how to cooperate to discover and defend air threats.
At the high-level Sharm el-Sheikh talks, participants reached agreement, in principle, on rapid notification procedures when air threats are detected, according to people familiar with the talks.
Currently, these notifications will be carried out via phone or computer but not through high-speed digital data sharing similar to the US military. Officials also discussed how decisions might be made about which forces would intercept air threats.
The newspaper considered that the talks, which have not been disclosed before, marked the first time that such a high level of Israeli and Arab officers had met under US military auspices to discuss how to defend against a common threat, and that it might serve as “the beginning of potential military cooperation in the future.”
After Israel was seen as an adversary in most parts of the Arab world for decades, the United States was able to hold such a meeting in the context of a number of variables that the region is going through, after the peace agreements sponsored by the administration of former US President Donald Trump, between Israel, UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.
The newspaper points to another factor driving the expansion of military cooperation, which is the desire of Arab countries to access Israeli air defense technology, at a time when the United States is shifting its military priorities towards confronting China and Russia.
However, discussions among Middle Eastern countries on air defense cooperation still have a long way to go and remain diplomatically sensitive.
Central Command spokesman Joe Puccino did not acknowledge that the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting took place, but said that the leadership “maintains its firm commitment to increasing regional cooperation and developing an integrated air and missile defense architecture to protect our forces and regional partners,” adding that Iran is the main destabilizing factor in all areas. across the Middle East”.
Officials in Israel and Arab countries refused to comment or did not respond to requests for comment on the meeting, but the UAE addressed the issue of cooperation broadly and did not comment on the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting in particular.
The UAE government said in a statement: “The UAE is not a party to any regional military alliance or cooperation targeting any specific country,” adding that it “is not aware of any official discussions related to any such regional military alliance.”
But the Israeli government revealed a “regional military partnership to combat Iranian threats.”
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said on the twentieth of this month, during a session in the Knesset, that Israel, the United States and “regional partners” had developed an air defense alliance that succeeded in thwarting Iranian attempts to attack Israel and other countries in the Middle East.
The Israeli defense minister referred to the program known as the “Middle East Air Defense”, which was built over the past year, adding that it “is already working to protect Israel and its neighbors from cruise missiles and drones,” according to the agency.Bloomberg“.
According to the Israeli Defense Minister, the upcoming visit of US President Joe Biden to the Middle East “will support this process.”
Biden will visit Saudi Arabia in the middle of next month, and the visit schedule included his attendance of a joint summit of the leaders of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf, in addition to Egypt, Jordan and Iraq.
The US administration talked about the possibility that other Arab countries would take steps towards normalizing relations with Israel during Biden’s upcoming visit to Saudi Arabia, which he will arrive in directly from Israeli territory, for the first time for any US president.
The upcoming visit also revived the idea of establishing a military alliance in the region, as the United States has long hoped to build an integrated air defense shield in the Middle East that would link radars, satellites and other sensors between the countries of the region.