WarSclerotic

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that closer ties between Israel and the Arab world were a silver lining of the otherwise “bad” Iran nuclear deal.

The 2015 pact was a “bad agreement in every respect except for one – it brought us closer to the Arab world on a scale that we never knew, and one of our goals is that it continues,” he said.

“Another important thing is, of course, the fact that there is a gradual normalization with leading countries in the Arab world,” Netanyahu added.

The prime minister, who is also acting foreign minister, was addressing diplomats at the Foreign Ministry during an event marking the Jewish new year.

He also said that Israel’s standing in the world was improving, a process he predicted could lead to peace.

“We are in the midst of a diplomatic flourishing,” he said. “We are also in a struggle for justice and truth, and I think that we are in a process of gradual normalization that in the end heralds a genuine opening for peace.”

In May, US President Donald Trump withdrew from the Iran deal, which had been signed by his predecessor Barack Obama and other world powers, and began restoring US sanctions. The move has exacerbated a financial crisis in Iran that has sent its currency tumbling.

Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that he can see a path to peace with Palestinians through the “normalization” of relations with Arab states, which, like Israel, oppose Iran.

“Many Arab countries now see Israel not as their enemy but as their indispensable ally in pushing back Iranian aggression,” Netanyahu told Lithuania’s LRT public broadcaster.

“This has created normalization which can lead to peace. I believe that if we have peace with the broader Arab world, it will help us get to peace with the Palestinians,” he added in the interview, which was taped during a visit to the Baltic state.

Both Israel and Saudi Arabia have opposed the Iran nuclear deal and pushed for tougher action against Iran’s spreading influence in the Middle East.

Israel has peace treaties with just two Arab countries, Egypt and Jordan, while others insist on an agreement with the Palestinians as a prerequisite that would pave the way to formal relations.

Israel and Saudi Arabia have no official relations and the kingdom does not recognize the Jewish state. Still, Israel has hinted at clandestine ties with Saudi Arabia in recent years, stressing the two countries share an interest in countering Iran.

The rumors of covert relations have been denied by Saudi officials. Still, a Saudi general visited Jerusalem in 2016 and met with Israeli lawmakers, and Saudi officials have met with Israeli officials on several occasions in public. Saudi Arabia also last recently allowed Air India to fly to and from Tel Aviv via its airspace.

Agencies contributed to this report.

MOSCOW, Russia — The Kremlin on Monday said that the leaders of Russia, Iran, and Turkey would on Friday hold a tripartite summit in Iran seeking an end to the Syrian conflict.

In a statement confirming the date of September 7 that was reported earlier by Turkish media, the Kremlin said Putin would “make a working visit to Iran” for the talks.

He, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani will consider “further joint efforts to ensure long-term normalization of the situation in Syria,” the Kremlin said.

Putin also plans bilateral talks with each of the leaders, it added.

The Kremlin said they would discuss further measures “aimed at finally liquidating the hotbed of international terrorism” in Syria, where the conflict has killed more than 350,000 people since 2011, many of them at the hands of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.

Syrian President Bashar Assad speaks during an interview with the Greek Kathimerini newspaper, in Damascus, Syria, in this photo released May 10, 2018. (SANA via AP)

Discussions will look at “promoting the process of a political settlement, including creating the conditions for the return of refugees and the internally displaced,” the Kremlin said.

The statement did not say where in Iran the talks would be held, but Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last week they would be in Tehran.

Putin, Rouhani and Erdogan have backed Syria peace talks based in the Kazakh capital of Astana which they insist are aimed at reinforcing, rather than undermining, a parallel UN peace process in Geneva.

The three leaders last met for similar tripartite talks in Ankara in April, and before that, in November last year, in the Russian resort of Sochi.

Iran and Russia are the main allies of Assad and their military interventions in Syria are widely seen as tipping the balance of the seven-year civil war in the regime’s favor.

Turkey has backed rebels seeking to oust Assad, but since late 2016 has been working increasingly closely with Iran and Russia to bring peace to Syria.

Preparations for the talks are going on as a Syrian regime offensive is expected imminently in the country’s last rebel stronghold, northwestern Idlib province, which Assad wants to recapture to crown a string of military successes.

Turkey has warned that a military operation to take Idlib risks provoking a humanitarian “catastrophe” with 3.5 million people crammed into the region.

WASHINGTON  — US President Donald Trump on Monday warned Syria against launching an attack on the country’s last rebel stronghold with the help of Russia and Iran, saying the offensive could trigger a “human tragedy.”

“President Bashar al-Assad of Syria must not recklessly attack Idlib Province. The Russians and Iranians would be making a grave humanitarian mistake to take part in this potential human tragedy,” Trump tweeted.

“Hundreds of thousands of people could be killed. Don’t let that happen!”

The United Nations and aid groups have warned that a full assault on Idlib could spark a humanitarian catastrophe on a scale not yet seen in Syria’s seven-year-old conflict.

Syrian government forces are now massing around the northwestern province of Idlib, which is held by a complex array of rebels and violent extremist fighters, many of whom have been blacklisted as “terrorists” by world powers.

Russia and Iran have insisted that extremist groups in Idlib must be defeated and are expected to back regime forces in any assault.

Since early 2017, Iran, fellow regime ally Russia and rebel backer Turkey have sponsored a negotiations track based in the Kazakh capital to tamp down hostilities in Syria.

Last year, they had designated Idlib as a “de-escalation” zone where violence would halt in preparation for a countrywide ceasefire.

Syrian rebel fighters prepare for an upcoming government forces offensive, in the countryside of the rebel-held northern Idlib province on September 3, 2018.( AFP PHOTO / OMAR HAJ KADOUR)

All the while seeking to pressure Turkey into reining in jihadists in Idlib, Damascus’s main sponsor Russia has been sounding the war drums in recent days.

Tehran and Moscow provided steady political, financial and military backing to Assad throughout the war, which has left over 350,000 people dead since it broke out in 2011.

The International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, said an all-out assault on Idlib and its catastrophic consequences could still be avoided.

Russia, whose air support would be crucial for the offensive to succeed, should understand that a bloodbath in Idlib would jeopardize its own political goals, according to ICG.

“By backing an all-out offensive, Russia risks undermining its long-term political objectives in Syria,” ICG wrote in a nine-page briefing entitled “Saving Idlib from destruction.”

US warnings ring hollow?

Despite Trump’s warning, analysts believe the United States appears resigned to the likelihood of a final military victory by Syrian government forces.

Behind the scenes, American diplomats have been actively warning Moscow, which has been accused in the past of turning a blind eye to chemical weapon use by its Syrian proteges.

Children sit in the shade of a tent at a camp for the displaced in the rebel-held Syrian province of Idlib, at the village of al-Ghadfa, southeast of the province on September 2, 2018. (AFP PHOTO / Nazeer AL-KHATIB)

But these “verbal warning shots” have little to do with today’s reality in Syria, said Jonas Parello-Plesner, a researcher with the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington who recently published a study on the US approach to the region.

And that reality, he told AFP, is that “Assad is advancing on the ground, aided by Iran by land and Russia by air,” while the United States places its hopes on a UN-backed Geneva peace process that might best be described, he said, as “moribund.”

Trump said in April that “it’s time” to bring American troops home from Syria — once the jihadists of the Islamic State group had been definitively defeated.

While he quickly backed away from talk of an immediate withdrawal, his underlying determination to leave Syria’s seven-year war as soon as possible seems unchanged.