Iran Slams Bahrain for ‘Welcoming’ Israeli Foreign Minister, Claims It’ll Bring Insecurity to Region

On 15 September 2020, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed an agreement on the normalisation of relations with Israel, which became known as the Abraham Accords.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has condemned Bahrain receiving Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, who earlier inaugurated the Jewish state’s diplomatic mission in the capital Manama.

“The Bahraini government’s welcoming of the foreign minister of the fake Zionist regime is a blatant betrayal of the oppressed and resilient Palestinian people’s cause”, Amir-Abdollahian tweeted on Friday.

He asserted that Israel establishing a diplomatic mission in Manama would result in nothing but insecurity for Bahrain and the entire region.

He was echoed by Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh, who argued that Bahrain’s “despicable” welcoming of Lapid runs counter to the will of the Bahraini people, and that his visit had left an “unremovable stain” on the reputation of the Persian Gulf country’s leaders.

The remarks came after Amir-Abdollahian, then-special aide to the speaker of the Iranian parliament on international affairs, claimed earlier this year that Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) would experience "major" challenges on a domestic level “in the near future” after signing an agreement on the normalisation of ties with Israel.

Abraham Accords Signing

A landmark agreement, officially known as the Abraham Accords, on the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain, was signed in Washington in September 2020. Morocco and Sudan later followed suit, inking similar agreements with the Jewish state.

The rapprochement prompted harsh criticism from the Palestinians, which are, in particular, at odds with Tel Aviv over ongoing Israeli settlement construction in West Bank.

For decades, Israel has been in conflict with the Palestinians, who have been seeking diplomatic recognition for their independent state on the territories of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which is partially controlled by Israel, and the Gaza Strip.

Trump's 'Deal of the Century'

Last year, then-President Donald Trump rolled out his so-called "deal of the century" aimed at solving the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian dispute, a document that was harshly criticised by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

The agreement allows Tel Aviv to extend its sovereignty to Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank, keeping the territory fragmented into Arab and Jewish zones policed by the Israeli military.

The deal also stipulates that Jerusalem become the "sovereign capital of the State of Israel", proposing, at the same time, to double the size of Palestinian territories through a series land swaps and calling for $50 billion to fund Palestinian National Authority (PNA) infrastructure projects.