Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Crown Prince of Bahrain Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa held their first public conversation on Tuesday, a week after the two countries, together with the United Arab Emirates, signed the historic Abraham Accords peace agreement at the White House.
Netanyahu characterized his telephone conversation with the crown prince as “very friendly,” saying in a statement that “we repeated the principles of the Abraham Accords and talked about how we are quickly adding content to the agreements between Bahrain and Israel and turning this peace [into] economic peace, technological peace, tourism peace, peace in every one of these areas.”
He added: “You will hear about practical steps very soon.”
Sources privy to the call said that the two also discussed the Iranian threat, which in the case of Bahrain is existential; Tehran is funding local pro-Iranian militias in an attempt to get extremists in the country’s Shi’ite majority to revolt against the Sunni monarchy and turn Bahrain into an Iranian proxy.
Bahrain foiled an attempted terrorist attack by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps earlier this year, the kingdom’s interior ministry said on Sunday.
Meanwhile, in the wake of the signing of the Abraham Accords, Israeli diplomats around the world have been meeting with their Emirati and Bahraini counterparts.
This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.
