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April 15, 2025 - Epoch Times
09:47
Gulf countries rely on Israel, not America, to protect them from Iran and the Muslim Brotherood
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How would you respond to, and there are a number of prominent voices that believe this, that it's actually America's relationship with Israel that's keeping America in the region?
Well, the U.S. has been interested in the Middle East before there was a Jewish state.
But more than that, Islamic terrorism, which is centered in the Middle East, Targeted the USA irrespective of US relations with Israel, irrespective of US...
policy. Islamic terrorism and other enemies of the US do not consider Israel to be the number one influence on their policy.
They view Israel as the vanguard of the U.S. in the Middle East.
They view Israel, and rightly so, as the most effective U.S. beachhead in the Middle East.
Iran's Ayatollahs refer to Israel as the"little Satan" while referring to the U.S. as the"great American Satan" which tells us about the priorities.
There's no zero-sum game between U.S. relations with Israel and U.S. relations with Arabs.
Namely, supposedly, ostensibly, the U.S. is losing Arab favors, the more it gets closer to Israel.
The fact is that the U.S. has maintained very productive relations with Israel, and at the same time, very productive relations with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain,
Egypt, Jordan.
And all these countries, in fact, have considered Israel to be an asset rather than a liability for the Saudis and the Emiratis and Bahrain and also Egypt and Jordan.
Israel has been regarded as a power of deterrence in the face.
Of the threat posed by Iran's Ayatollah and the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Saudis and the Emiratis in Bahrain have the machetes of the Ayatollahs and the Muslim Brotherhood at their throat.
And they look around and ask themselves, who can we rely on?
Well, sometimes they can rely on the U.S. depending on the tenant in the White House.
Does the tenant try to appease the Ayatollahs or is the tenant facing the Ayatollahs very decisively?
So the U.S. sometimes is reliable as far as they are concerned, sometimes not so reliable.
They have written off the Europeans because the Europeans have lost their will to flex a muscle against Islamic terrorism.
Every single relatively moderate Arab regime has the machetes of terrorists at their throat.
The only country upon which they can rely to an extent has been Israel.
And therefore, American ties with Israel are not at the expense of America.
American ties with the Arabs because the Arabs realize Israel serves as a major line of defense of the Hashemite regime in Jordan, the pro-American Hashemite regime in Jordan.
Israel has developed Pretty close defense ties with Saudi Arabia.
The same goes for the King of Morocco, who highly respects Israel's capabilities in combating terrorism.
And the bottom line is that when it comes to facing Islamic terrorism, U.S. and Israel and the pro-U.S.
Arab countries are facing a mutual enemy.
Sometimes people imagine, and I've certainly believed this actually at one point in my life until I learned more, that the U.S. has always been incredibly pro-Israel.
That's not always the case.
I wonder if you could give me kind of a picture of the last, you know, since 1948.
1948, the State Department was the number one...
Enemy, not opponent, but enemy of the idea of establishing a Jewish state.
At that time, the CIA and the Pentagon sided with the State Department while President Truman was debating, was wavering, was still on the sideline before he decided to support Israel.
We had the same thing before the Israeli decision.
To bomb the Iraqi nuclear reactor.
Israel destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981.
U.S. imposed on Israel severe punishment, suspending the supply of critical military systems, including combat aircraft.
It took the U.S. 10 years to admit that Israel was right and the U.S. was wrong.
And it took place after the first Gulf War of January 1991.
There was a major event here in Washington of the defense establishment.
The keynote speaker was then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.
I was at the event because...
At that time, I was at the Israeli embassy in charge of our relations with the U.S. Congress, and I still remember...
The first sentence by Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.
Thank you, Israel, for bombing the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, which spared the U.S. nuclear confrontation in 1991.
How many trillions of dollars were spared by that gutsy Israeli bombing of Iraqi nuclear reactor?
Thousands of lives were spared because of that Israeli operation.
And there are many, many other examples.
One of them is the Six Days War.
Before the 1967 war, Israel had all the intelligence information that Egypt and Syria and Jordan are planning a surprise attack on Israel.
The Israeli Prime Minister flew to the U.S., met with then President Lyndon Johnson, shared with him the information.
The advice by the U.S. to Israel was do not preempt because if you shall act alone, you may remain alone and we are not going to extend a hand to you.
Israel defied the U.S. pressure.
Preempted and devastated the Egyptian and the Syrian military forces.
At that time, Egypt was on its way to become the supreme pan-Arab power jointly or assisted by the Soviet Union.
The devastation of the Egyptian military by Israel Denied the Soviet Union a major, major groundbreaking historic achievement in the Middle East, spared the U.S. a major economic and national security blow,
because back in 1967, U.S. was heavily depended on Persian Gulf oil.
On the eve of the Six-Day War of 1967, 70,000 Egyptian soldiers were stationed in Yemen.
Aiming to invade Saudi Arabia and topple the pro-U.S.
House of Saud, which would have been a major, major catastrophe to the oil market and the economy of the West at large.
All of that was spared by Israeli defiance of U.S. pressure.
Israel bombed the Syrian.
nuclear reactor in 2007 and again the US was not very happy with that but one can only imagine the impact of the last or the civil war of the last 10-15 years in Syria if there would have been also nuclear capability involved in that Syrian war.
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