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Israel's Defence Ministry said on Wednesday Benny Gantz would
sign a security cooperation agreement with Bahrain, which along
with the UAE normalised relations with Israel in 2020, partly
out of shared concerns about Iran.
Bahrain hosts the Fifth Fleet's headquarters as well as some
operations for CENTCOM, a U.S. military coordination umbrella
organisation for the Middle East that Israel joined last year.
"Against a backdrop of increasing maritime and aerial threats,
our ironclad cooperation is more important than ever," Gantz
said on Twitter after the naval base visit.
Israel this week is joining a 60-nation U.S.-led Middle East
naval exercise alongside the UAE and Bahrain and, for the first
time, publicly alongside Saudi Arabia and Oman, two counties it
has no diplomatic relations with.
Israel's defence ministry gave no details of what a security
accord with Bahrain would include. Bahrain's government
communications office did not respond to a request for comment.
Gantz flew to Bahrain for the two-day trip on an Israeli air
force transport plane. It was the first time an Israeli defence
chief had visited the Gulf nation or that an Israeli military
aircraft had landed there.
In September, Bahrain hosted Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid
for the highest-level visit since the normalisation deals.
The UAE on Wednesday said it intercepted three drones that
entered its airspace over unpopulated areas in the fourth such
attack in the past few weeks.
(Writing by Lisa Barrington; Additional reporting by Jeffrey
Heller; editing by John Stonestreet)
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