U.S. Arranges Secret Talks Between Israel, U.A.E. Over Iran
Washington prods longtime adversaries on intelligence sharing, military cooperation against a common threat
WASHINGTON—Israel and the United Arab Emirates held secret meetings arranged by the U.S. in recent months to share information and coordinate efforts to counter what they see as the increasing threat posed by Iran, according to U.S. officials familiar with the clandestine diplomacy.
The meetings were convened by Brian Hook, the State Department’s top official for Iran, and are the latest sign of a steady thaw between Israel and Gulf Arab nations, largely brought about by their shared antipathy toward Tehran and its attempts to spread its regional influence.
A first meeting took place this spring and a second was held more recently, a U.S. official said. The exact dates and locations of the unpublicized meetings couldn’t be learned. Their existence was known to only a handful of people within the U.S. government, officials said.
Israel has diplomatic ties among Arab states only with Egypt and Jordan. Historic disagreements remain with those two as well as other Arab nations, particularly over the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
But covert, and occasionally overt, contacts between Israel and Gulf Arab nations have increased rapidly in recent years as concerns grew about Iran’s nuclear program and its role in conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
The discussions among U.S., Israeli and Emirati officials, although still in the preliminary stages, appear to indicate those contacts have gone beyond being symbolic and exploratory to mapping coordination on specific issues. They were intended to increase diplomatic, military and intelligence cooperation in dealing with Iran, the U.S. officials said
The deepening cooperation between Israel and the U.A.E. is an outgrowth of a U.S.-brokered conference on Middle East security held in Warsaw in February. The two-day meeting brought together leaders from Israel, the U.A.E., Saudi Arabia and dozens of other countries in an effort to build a global campaign against Iran.
The Warsaw meeting brought Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu together with Arab leaders for wide-ranging discussions on how to challenge Iran. Those talks led to the creation of coordinated discussions between Israel and the U.A.E.—both close U.S. allies—that are coordinated by Mr. Hook. U.A.E. officials declined to comment; Israeli officials didn’t respond to a request for comment.
As head of the State Department’s Iran Action Group, Mr. Hook has worked to bring the adversaries together for secret meetings, according to people familiar with the discussions.
“The Iran Action Group has been working with several countries to coordinate diplomatic, security and intelligence activities in response to Iran’s escalating aggression,“ a senior Trump administration official said. “These efforts have helped to pre-empt and neutralize multiple Iranian threats including terrorist and cyber operations in third countries, planned attacks against international shipping, and illegal trafficking in arms. The official didn’t identify any specific threats that were thwarted.
A former U.S. official said Mr. Hook wants help from Israel and the Emirates in getting other countries in Europe and the Middle East to take a tough stance regarding Tehran.
But complicating matters, the former official said, is that the Emirates has its own diplomatic back channels to Iran.
The U.A.E. took a more cautious approach than the U.S. as tensions with Iran rose this summer. It declined to join Washington in blaming Iran for attacks on commercial ships in May, and last month sent officials to Tehran to discuss maritime security. Tensions have risen since President Trump last year withdrew from a six-nation nuclear deal with Iran and increased economic sanctions on the country.
Israel has made building ties to the Gulf states a major diplomatic priority. For most of its history since being founded in 1948, Israel has been shunned by the Arab world—although relations with Sunni-led Gulf powers were never as tense as they often were with immediate neighbors, such as Egypt and Syria.
Israel’s foreign minister visited the U.A.E. earlier this year for a U.N. conference. The minister, Israel Katz, was quoted last week as saying he had met with a “high-ranking persona” in the Emirati government. Mr. Katz also met last month in Washington with Bahrain’s foreign minister, Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa. There was nothing covert about that meeting—both sides agreed to release a photo of the two men with a smiling Mr. Hook between them.
Bahrain has been the most forward-leaning of the Gulf Arab countries in pursuing contacts with Israel, two former U.S. officials said. It allowed Israeli journalists and businesspeople to attend a recent conference in Manama on the economic aspects of the Trump administration’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, and is expected to allow Israel to participate in a conference on Gulf maritime and aviation security in October.
Aaron David Miller, a veteran Middle East negotiator who worked for both Democratic and Republican presidents, said that a shift in regional dynamics that has elevated common concerns about Iran has been a catalyst for deeper cooperation between Israel and Arab countries that don’t officially recognize Israel as a nation.
“It’s new and it’s different, and it genuinely never existed to the degree that it does now,” he said. “This is happening because of significant and profound regional changes that have altered the calculations of Arab nations.”
While the deepening cooperation could lay the groundwork for more expansive relations, Mr. Miller said it would take more time to develop. “It’s an exaggeration to suggest that somehow these relationships are on a straight-line track to blossom into a significant and sustained feature of this new Middle East,” he said.