Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz estimated that Iran was a year or two away from building a nuclear bomb. His estimate coincided with comments by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who said that Iran is just three or four months away from being able to produce enough fissile material to build a nuclear weapon.
Morocco recently established full diplomatic relations with Israel as part of the Abraham Accords, an effort by the United States to forge normalization agreements between Israel and Arab states to build a united front against Iran.
Israel and Lebanon recently initiated groundbreaking negotiations to resolve a long-standing maritime border dispute in the eastern Mediterranean. Resolution of the dispute could lead to developing the potentially lucrative natural gas fields that would benefit both sides.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently declared that his decision to convert the Church of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul’s massive sixth-century Byzantine cathedral, into a mosque foreshadows a future pan-Islamic reconquest of Jerusalem.
A recent report by the American think tank RAND warned that China has close ties with Iran, and that “the Chinese government might require Chinese companies doing business in Israel to share insights with the Iranian government in order to win friends and influence in Tehran.”
