Jerusalem Post’s 10th Annual Conference

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett speaks at the Jerusalem Post’s annual coference on October 12, 2021 in Jerusalem, Israel. (Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images)

TEL AVIV: Concern over Iran’s regional ambitions at the precipice of a new nuclear deal have pushed Israel and its Arab neighbors to unprecedented levels of cooperation, including back-to-back historic summits and, according to defense sources here, new defense and intelligence sharing arrangements.

“The cooperation is, on the one hand, surprising, and on the other a real critical requirement to protect countries from a country with nuclear capabilities and dreams to control big areas of the Middle East and the Gulf,” an Israeli defense source told Breaking Defense.

Some of the arrangements are so sensitive that they cannot be disclosed, but the source said one includes the sharing of real-time intelligence about Iranian drones so they can be more easily intercepted.

The deal was one outcome of the Negev Summit Monday, which featured top diplomats from Israel, the US, Egypt, Bahrain, the UAE and Morocco. That summit followed the first-ever meeting between Egyptian, Emirati and Israeli leaders in Egypt last week.

Defense sources told Breaking Defense the trilateral meeting covered “a long list of security interests” and also produced a joint defense strategy with Iran in mind.

At the Negev Summit, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said, “The shared capabilities we are building intimidate and deter our common enemies, first and foremost Iran and its proxies. They certainly have something to fear.”

Though the US was represented by Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the most recent summit, analysts have told Breaking Defense that the cause for such close anti-Iran cooperation has been a fear about what Israel sees as America’s single-minded focus on signing a new Iran nuclear deal. The most recent example of which, critics say, is the Biden administration’s consideration for removing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from US terrorism lists.

Though no announcement has been made either way, Israeli defense sources suspected the US would go through with it, and said the UAE had already come to the conclusion that changing Washington’s mind was a “waste of time.” (Earlier this month, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said there was an “ongoing negotiation” regarding the IRGC’s status.)

Amos Gilead, a former Israeli brigadier general who served as head of the military intelligence research division, said the very public summits themselves were a clear sign of how seriously the region takes the Iranian threat and America’s relative withdrawal.

“I can see very wide cooperation between the three countries in issues that until recently looked unthinkable,” said Gilead, referring to Israel, Egypt and the UAE.

Israeli political sources said Middle Eastern nations like Saudi Arabia and the UAE have grown increasingly frustrated with the White House, recalling when leaders in those nations refused to take calls from President Joe Biden earlier in the Ukraine crisis. Beyond the Iranian nuclear deal, the countries are frustrated by what they see as America’s tepid response to attacks eminating from Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

“Someone in DC refuses to see the facts and acts based on imaginary scripts,” one Israeli political source said.

Absent the US, several regional powers are shoring up their security on their own, including potential deals directly with Israeli defense firms, as previously reported by Breaking Defense.

Israel and Egypt, in particular, have grown so close that Israel has leveraged its influence in Washington to try to help Egypt get new, American-made F-15 fighter jets, as first reported by Axios’s Barak Ravid and confirmed by sources here. Israeli strategy holds that as long as Egypt’s military isn’t a threat to Israel, it’s better to have the African nation’s military equipped with US or Israeli equipment than pushing Cairo to Russia or China.