Returning to Iran nuclear deal risks Arab-Israel peace pacts, US envoy warns

Outgoing US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman has warned that his country would risk Israel’s normalisation deals with Arab states if it returned to Iran’s nuclear deal, Israel Hayom reported last week.

In an interview with the Israeli newspaper, Friedman said that the normalisation agreements with the Arab states came into light after work carried out by former US President Donald Trump’s administration.

Those deals, he said, had been made possible due to the trust all sides had shown the US in recent years – partly due to the administration’s aggressive stance toward Tehran.

As a result, he said, American rapprochement with Iran could freeze the Middle East peace process or even reverse it.

“These are young agreements, very important to Israel and the region, that could change the Middle East in the next 100 years,” he said, adding: “They could be executed because the US was seen as a strong player on which all sides could rest.”

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“If the US strengthens Iran, it won’t be able to promote the process, and there will be friction.”

Friedman stressed: “If the next [US] administration bolsters Iran, the status of the US will weaken, and it will have a hard time moving the process ahead.”

Last year, the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco signed the ‘Arabham Accords’ normalising relations with the occupation state of Israel. The agreements were slammed by Palestinians officials.