Netanyahu: Warsaw Meeting Held With War Against Iran as a Common Goal

Touts Israel, Gulf Arab states meeting together to plot openly against Iran

Officially a conference on the Middle East, the two-day meeting kicking off Wednesday in Warsaw would be more correctly presented as an anti-Iran conference. US and Israeli officials have made a point all week that pushing anti-Iran measures would be the focus of Warsaw.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was very frank about this, calling it an “open meeting with representatives of leading Arab countries, that are sitting down together with Israel in order to advance the common interest of war with Iran.”

Israel has been agitating for a global war against Iran for years, but apparently felt this was a bit too on the nose, Subsequently, the public Tweet of the statement was revised to say that they wanted conflict against Iran, not “war.”

Yet while the US was hoping to sell Europe on cutting off trade with Iran, the Israeli narrative within the conference was all war, leading Iranian FM Javad Zarif to conclude that everyone attending the “Warsaw Circus” now knows where Netanyahu stands.

There is still another day of conference, so it is unclear where all this will lead. The safe bet is that everyone who went into the meeting hostile toward Iran will remain so, however, and those not interested in a military engagement won’t be convinced by the same old rhetoric.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.