Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a call for a regional defense alliance of nations to confront Iran in the Middle East.
He said it should include countries that “have made peace with Israel and those that will make peace with Israel” to confront Iran’s malign influence, spread of terrorism and military-grade nuclear ambitions.
Netanyahu said the region already “saw a glimpse of that alliance” on April 13, when Iran fired more than 300 missiles and explosive drones from its own territory towards Israel. A coalition of countries led by Israel and the United States, but also including Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, participated for a period of several hours to neutralize the threat.
The Israeli prime minister thanked U.S. President Joe Biden “for bringing that alliance together.”
In a briefing with the Israeli press delegation after his congressional speech on Wednesday afternoon, Netanyahu compared such a cohort to a “NATO-style alliance.” During the address, he said the unified group “would be a security coalition in every sense of the word.”
He said it would essentially be “an extension of the groundbreaking Abraham Accords,” which included normalization agreements signed in the fall of 2020 between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. And he suggested that the pact be called the “Abraham Alliance.”
Israel would likely attempt to recruit Saudi Arabia to join an alliance, whether or not Israel succeeds in signing a formal normalization agreement with the Sunni kingdom.
In his address, Netanyahu noted that Israel is currently fighting a war on multiple fronts against Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis, all terrorist proxies funded and armed by Tehran, and even by Iran itself.
“In the Middle East,” Netanyahu said, “Iran is virtually behind all the terrorism, all the turmoil, all the chaos, all the killing.”
