Iran more toxic than Arab-Israel conflict, say Gulf offic­ials

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has released a video of a closed meeting in which senior Gulf Arab offic­ials play down the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, defend Israel’s right to defend itself, and describe Iran as the greatest threat to region­al peace.

The video, recorded on a mobil­e device, gave a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes contacts the Israeli leader often boasts of, but which are rarely seen in public. It was unclear who took it.

Mr Netanyahu’s office briefly made the YouTube video available yesterday to a small group of journalists travelling with him, befor­e quickly removing it.

It was unclear whether Mr Netanyahu, who is running for re-election, intended to leak the informatio­n or distributed it mistakenly. But the decision to take the video down indicated that the Gulf officials, whose governments do not have formal diplomatic relation­s with Israel, had not consent­ed to its release.

The edited, 25-minute video shows a series of comments made by officials from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on a panel discussion at a US-sponsored security conference in Warsaw. Sixty nations participated in the gathering, which was heavily focused on countering Iran’s growing influence.

Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid Al Khalifa made some of the toughest comments, saying Iran was a far bigger threat to regiona­l security than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Read the article in The Australian (AP).