HomeNewsOpinionAfghanistan Crisis | How US withdrawal has got Israel jittery

Afghanistan Crisis | How US withdrawal has got Israel jittery

Any hopes of stabilisation towards the war-ravaged MENA will be set back if the US and Israel don’t let the events in Afghanistan to pan out on their own, and give the Muslim world a respite from conflict 

August 25, 2021 / 12:18 IST
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Image: Reuters
Image: Reuters

The Taliban takeover has rattled Israel, disapprovingly watching the United States being ‘unreliable’ and ‘sensing an opportunity’ of arresting its retrenchment from West Asia — to focus on a new Great Power Contest with China — by raising tensions with Iran, that will force a US presence.

Israeli intelligence sources say they want to ‘leverage events there’ in their favour by pressing US President Joe Biden from re-entering the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA or Iran nuclear deal). While curbing Iran’s nuclear programme, Washington also lifted sanctions that gave Tehran access to international banking and commerce, which strengthened it economically and geopolitically before Israel’s rumoured-ally Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

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Believing Israel is now the “only significant force stable and determined enough to stand up to Iran,”, its Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett have talked about forming regional alliances against ‘Iranian terrorism’. Bennett said he would tell Biden “to not give (the Iranians) a lifeline in the form of re-entering into an expired nuclear deal” in his upcoming visit to the White House on August 26. Already under fire for being ‘weak’ on Afghanistan, Biden is expected to be under pressure to maintain the debilitating sanctions on Iran — which itself begins its ‘pivot to the East and Eurasia’ firmly part of Russian and Chinese grand design.

Pro-government Israeli media suggest the Jewish nation can offer itself for “close security cooperation (to) better defend themselves if the US will not be there in the end,” but (without expecting) “Israel will send troops to save their regime.” On August 12, Lapid said they were creating a “diplomatic axis of Israel, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) against Iran.” Of these, Bahrain, the UAE, Sudan and Morocco had signed the Abraham Accords in August 2020 normalising ties with Israel. Bahrain is key to Israel’s West Asia doorway.