BICOM

What happened: Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei spoke out yesterday on the possibility that Israel and Saudi Arabia would establish formal diplomatic relations.

• Khamenei said, “The Islamic Republic’s clear stance is that the governments that are betting on normalisation with the Zionist regime will lose. They are making a mistake. That regime will pass from the world. As the Europeans say, they are betting on the wrong, losing horse. That cancer will be wiped away by the Palestinians and the forces of resistance. The Zionist entity’s situation today doesn’t encourage moving nearer to it, and Arab countries must not make that mistake.”
• He continued, “the Zionist regime brims with hatred and anger not only towards Iran, but towards other countries in the region.”
• “The Zionists aren’t pleased with the countries that surround them. They also hate Egypt, Iraq and Syria. Why? Because the Zionist regime’s main goal was to conquer territories from the Nile to the Tigris and Euphrates, and that hasn’t happened. Those countries didn’t allow that. It is written in the Quran, ‘Be angry and die of anger,’ and that is what will be. The Zionists are dying now, and they will ultimately die of anger.”
• Prime Minister Netanyahu said in response, “whereas Khamenei’s terrorist regime exports destruction and devastation, Israel advances progress and peace. Just as Iran didn’t stop us from securing the Abraham Accords, Iran won’t stop us from expanding even further the circle of peace for the benefit of the citizens of Israel, the peoples or the region and all of humanity.”
• Defence Minister Gallant weighed in too, saying “the murderous terrorist regime in Iran has already succeeded in pulverising several countries it has seized control of, and now it is trying to sabotage peace efforts with idle threats. Iran will continue to act to sow terrorism and destruction, and Israel will act to achieve security for its citizens and peace in the Middle East.”

Context: The US is leading efforts to reach Israel and Saudi normalisation, with the two most significant challenges being the Saudi demand to achieve indigenous capacity to produce civilian nuclear power and the level of relief measures the Palestinians will receive as part of the deal.

• Israel’s security establishment and the Atomic Energy Commission are currently studying the ramifications of Saudi nuclear energy, whether safeguards can prevent it from developing a weapon, and concerns it will spark regional nuclear proliferation.
• They will also assess if a US-Saudi defence pact will limit Israel’s qualitative military edge in the region.
• Khamenei’s comments are being interpreted in Israel as a sign of distress.
• In an additional signal of the fragility of the recent Saudi-Iranian rapprochement, the Saudi football team Al-Ittihad this week cancelled its Asian Champions League match against an Iranian team in Isfahan at the last minute, protesting the placing of a bust of Qasem Soleimani, the late commander of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, at the entrance to the pitch.
• Khamenei’s comments followed the latest strikes against Iranian military infrastructure in eastern Syria close to the Iraqi border, with Syrian media accusing Israel of attacking several targets in the Deir ez-Zor area in eastern Syria on Monday night.
• Israel regularly targets Iranian military infrastructure in Syria as part of its ‘campaign between the wars’ but rarely formally takes credit. These latest strikes are notable in that they took place over 700km from Israel’s border and struck up to five separate military targets including:
  • An Iranian weapons depot.
  • A factory assembling precision-guided missiles.
  • Syrian miliary radars, to incapacitate the Syrian air-defence systems from being used effectively.
• Syrian sources also claimed two Syrian soldiers were injured.
• This was the fifth time Syria has claimed Israeli airstrikes in the last month. In the past, senior Israeli officials have claimed Israeli airstrikes have hit hundreds of targets inside Syria to prevent Iranian military entrenchment.
• The location of these latest strikes feeds concerns that Iran is looking to re-establish its land corridor for weapons smuggling from the Iraqi-Syrian border, through to the Syrian Golan and Lebanon.
• In a more positive development, after no official visits a second Israeli government minister in two weeks visited Saudi Arabia yesterday. Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi (Likud) will address an international media conference in Riyadh.

Looking ahead: US Secretary of State Blinken is expected to visit Israel later this month as part of the coordinated effort to reach a normalisation agreement.

• Defence Minister Gallant is then expected to visit Washington for further discussions on the security implications of a deal and the ongoing Iranian threat.