Why Israel is joining the Pentagon's 'Arab Nato'

The move demonstrates a growing US confidence that the Arab states - at least those that matter to Washington - are unperturbed about being seen to make a military accommodation with Israel, in addition to political and economic engagement. It underscores the fact that the oil-rich Gulf states, alongside Israel, are now the key drivers of US foreign policy in the region and suggests that the most important, Saudi Arabia, is waiting for the right moment to sign its own accord with Israel.

Israel, it is expected, will continue to conduct military exercises in Europe with Nato countries, but will soon be able to build similar direct relations with Arab armies, especially those being rapidly expanded and professionalised in the Gulf using its oil wealth.

It is likely that Israeli officers will soon move out of the shadows and publicly train and advise the UAE and Saudi armies as part of their joint roles in Centcom. Israel's particular expertise, drawing on decades of surveilling, controlling and oppressing Palestinians, will be highly sought after in Gulf states fearful of internal dissent or uprisings.

As the Israeli scholar Jeff Halper has noted, Israel has shown how effective it is at translating its military and security ties with armies and police forces around the world into diplomatic support in international bodies.

The Middle East is not likely to be different. Once Israel has become the linchpin of more professionalised armies in the region, those states dependent on its help can be expected to further abandon the Palestinian cause.

Another dividend for Israel will be complicating Washington's relations with the Arab region.

Not only does Centcom operate major bases in the Gulf, especially in Bahrain and Qatar, but it leads the proclaimed "war on terror", with overt or covert operations in several Arab states, including Iraq and Syria.

It will be harder for the US to disentangle itself from Israel's own openly belligerent operations, including airstrikes, in both countries, that are conducted in flagrant violation of international law. Tensions between the US and Baghdad have in the past escalated over Israeli airstrikes in Iraq, with threats to limit US access to Iraqi airspace.

With Israel inside Centcom, the US and its most favoured Arab states are also likely to be more directly implicated in Israel's major military operations against the Palestinians, such as the repeated "wars" on Gaza.

This will pose a significant challenge to the region's cooperative institutions such as the Arab League. It is almost certain to drive an even deeper wedge between pro-Washington Arab states and those accused of being on the wrong side of the "war on terror". The result could be a regional divide-and-rule policy cultivated by Israel that mirrors the decades-long, disabling divisions Israel has generated in the Palestinian leadership, most pronounced in the split between Fatah and Hamas.

The biggest bonus for Israel will be a more formal alliance with Arab states against Iran and shepherding more ambivalent states into Israel's orbit.

That appears to have been the purpose of the recently well-publicised reconciliation between the UAE and Saudis on one side and Qatar on the other, achieved in the dying days of the Trump administration. One of the chief causes of the lengthy blockade of Qatar related to its insistence on maintaining political and economic ties with Tehran.

Israel's aim is to force the Biden administration's hand in continuing Trump's belligerent anti-Iran policy, which included aggressive sanctions, assassinations and tearing up the 2015 nuclear agreement with Tehran signed by Barack Obama. That deal had given inspectors access to Iran to ensure it did not develop a nuclear bomb that might neutralise the strategic clout Israel gains from its nuclear arsenal.

Inside Centcom, Israel will be able to work more closely with Gulf allies to sabotage any efforts inside Washington to revive the nuclear accord with Tehran. That point was underscored last week when an online security conference, hosted by Tel Aviv University, was attended by two Gulf ministers.

At the conference, Kochavi, Israel's military chief of staff, issued an unprecedented public rebuke to Biden over recent statements that he wished to revive the nuclear deal. Kochavi called the agreement "bad and wrong strategically and operatively", claimed that Iran would launch nuclear missiles at Israel once it had them, and declared that a go-it-alone attack by Israel "must be on the table".

Bahrain's foreign minister, Abdullatif al-Zayani, observed that Israel and the Gulf states would have a better chance of preventing any US conciliation towards Iran if they spoke in a "unified voice". He added: "A joint regional position on these issues will exert greater influence on the United States."

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