WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Israel and the United Arab Emirates have held secret meetings, arranged by the United States, to coordinate efforts to counter Iran, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
The US special envoy to Iran, Brian Hawk, coordinated the meetings between the UAE and Israel. The first meeting took place last spring, while the second was held recently.
She said the UAE's possession of a back-channel diplomatic channel with Iran complicates US efforts to tighten stances against Tehran.
It quoted a former US official as saying that while the United States seeks to help Israel and the UAE in getting a number of Arab and European countries to take tough positions towards Iran, the UAE's diplomatic back-channel to communicate with Tehran on navigation security complicates these positions.
Al-Jazeera's Washington correspondent Fadi Mansour said the two meetings between the UAE and Israel are known to a small number of US officials.
The correspondent quoted the newspaper that the meetings touched on coordination between the two countries at the levels of intelligence, security and military.
The correspondent pointed out that these meetings were the fruit of the Warsaw Conference on the Middle East, which was held by the United States with the participation of a number of Arab countries in addition to Israel, which succeeded in establishing a coordination mechanism between Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv on Iran.
A few days ago, the Washington Post quoted officials and analysts as saying that there were doubts about the extent to which the United States relied on UAE support if current tensions in the Gulf led to war with Iran.
Abu Dhabi, which backed US President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal with Iran, had no intention of leading to a confrontation like the one in the Gulf, UAE officials told the newspaper.
That would raise questions about Abu Dhabi's ability to be a reliable ally in the event of war between the United States and Iran, the newspaper said, pointing to its regional ambition diminished as tensions between Washington and Iran rise.
The UAE has already sent a Coast Guard delegation to Tehran to discuss maritime security, putting it at odds with Washington's goal of isolating Iran.
A UAE official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the UAE does not want war, adding that the most important thing is security, stability and peace in this part of the world.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry has announced that Israel's participation in a US-sponsored coalition in the Gulf waters is an explicit threat to Tehran's national security, stressing that it will deal strongly with any Israeli presence in the Gulf waters as part of its deterrent and defensive policies.