The American "Axios" website reported that Bahraini officials had contacted counterparts in the White House, after the normalization of relations between the UAE and Israel on August 13th.
And they requested that their country be the next country after the Emirates to normalize relations with Israel.
"Hours after the UAE and Israel reached the normalization agreement, high-ranking Bahraini officials contacted Jared Kushner, the chief adviser to US President Donald Trump, and they also called the White House Special Representative for International Negotiations, Avi Berkowitz, and informed them of Manama’s desire for Bahrain to be the country," the report published on Friday said. Following in normalization with Israel. "
The report pointed out the existence of "secret relations between Israel and Bahrain that have gone behind closed doors for a long time," noting that "the agreement to establish all diplomatic relations between them took only 29 days" after the announcement of the Emirati-Israeli normalization.
The report stated that the Bahraini officials' communications included, in addition to Kushner and Berkowitz, others such as the US National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien, the US special envoy to Iran, Brian Hook, the Director General of the National Security Council for the Middle East, Miguel Correa, and the US ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who conducted Discussions with Bahraini officials such as the Bahraini Crown Prince, Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, some of his high-level advisers, and Bahrain’s ambassador to Washington.
The report emphasized that the Israeli ambassador to Washington, Ron Damer, and the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, "played an effective role in those discussions, and unlike the agreement concluded with the UAE, the course of the agreement with Bahrain was hidden from Netanyahu's government coalition."
The news also indicated that Kushner visited Bahrain after his visit to Israel and the Emirates early this month, and "bought a copy of the Torah from his own money, and gave it to Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa during his reception."
The report indicated that the US presidency wanted the agreement between Bahrain and Israel to come before the official signing ceremony of the agreement between Israel and the UAE scheduled for Tuesday, September 15th, stressing that the signing of two Arab countries of the normalization agreement with Israel in one day "will send a stronger message to the world."
On Friday, US President Donald Trump announced Bahrain’s joining the UAE in normalization with Israel, and the official Bahrain News Agency quoted her country's foreign affairs as saying that Trump and King Hamad bin Isa agreed during a phone call to establish full diplomatic relations between Tel Aviv and Manama, so that Bahrain would become the Arab state. The fourth to sign a normalization agreement with Israel, after Egypt, Jordan and the UAE.