That view was echoed by Anwar Gargash, the UAE's foreign affairs minister.
Middle East bogeymanIn a sign of how the Biden administration is already fearful of taking on a broad Middle Eastern alliance against Iran, the new president's pick for secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said last month it was "vitally important" to consult with Israel and the Gulf states before re-entering the deal.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, desperate to bolster his electoral fortunes and deflect attention from his looming corruption trial, has every incentive to prise open that chink.
Ensuring Iran remains the Middle East's number one bogeyman - the focus of western hostility - is in the joint interests of an Israel that has no intention of ending its decades-old obstruction of Palestinian statehood and of Gulf states that have no intention of ending their own human rights abuses and promotion of Islamic discord.
Mike Pompeo, Trump's departing secretary of state, planted a landmine last month designed to serve Israeli and Saudi interests by highlighting the fact that a number of al-Qaeda leaders have found shelter in Iran. That echoed the Bush administration's - in this case, entirely fanciful - claim of ties between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein as a pretext, along with non-existent WMD, for the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003.
With Israel's arrival in Centcom, the lobbying for a repeat of that catastrophic blunder can only grow - and with it, the prospects for renewed conflagration in the Middle East.
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