Jerusalem: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his Bahraini counterpart have landed in Israel to mark a new, US-brokered normalisation deal just hours after Israeli forces carried out retaliatory air strikes on Iranian targets in Syria.
The strikes, which Syria’s state media said had killed at least three Syrian soldiers, came a day after Israeli forces claimed to have found anti-personnel mines planted in Israeli-held territory along the boundary with Syria.
They were part of a long-running campaign by Israel to thwart what it describes as a concerted effort by Iran to entrench itself on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau that overlooks northern Israel.
The foreign minister of Bahrain, Abdul Latif bin Rashid al-Zayani, was making the first official visit since his country agreed to normalise relations with Israel — a deal that followed a similar agreement between Israel and Bahrain’s Gulf neighbour, the United Arab Emirates. Pompeo arrived later on Wednesday, US time, to attend a meeting of Israeli, Bahraini and American officials.
The normalisation deals were struck in the waning days of the Trump administration to notch final foreign policy achievements just before the November 3 election.
The sight of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Pompeo and Zayani standing side by side on a podium at Netanyahu’s residence served a victory image for the outgoing Trump administration.
Read the article by Isabel Kershner in The Sydney Morning Herald (The New York Times, Reuters).