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According to an Israeli foreign ministry
statement the two leaders discussed 'Iran and regional threats'.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz on
Thursday announced that he had met his Bahrain
counterpart publicly during a visit to Washington, DC the first meeting between
the two countries that do not have diplomatic relations.
"Yesterday I met publicly with the
Foreign Minister of Bahrain" Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, Katz said
in a tweet.
Referring to Benjamin Netanyahu,
Katz added: "I will continue to work with (the Israeli Prime Minister) to
advance Israel's relations with the Gulf countries."
Israel has diplomatic relations with only
two Arab countries - Egypt and Jordan - but common concerns over Iran have
brought it closer to Gulf nations in recent years.
According to an Israeli Foreign Ministry
statement, the "meeting was coordinated behind the scenes by the US State
Department as part of a conference on religious liberty organised in Washington
by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo".
The two men "addressed the subject
of Iran and regional threats as well as cooperation between states and agreed
to continue...," it added.
Gulf Arab nations have increasingly found
common cause with Israel due to their shared hostility towards Iran. Tehran is
accused of wanting to extend its influence in the region and of seeking to
acquire nuclear weapons.
Last month, Bahrain hosted
a conference to discuss what the US has described as the economic part of
President Donald Trump's "deal of the century", his proposal for
solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The meeting comes at a time of mounting
tensions in the Gulf region between the United States and Iran which has been
slapped with a raft of sanctions by the Trump administration.
On Thursday, the US military shot down an
Iranian drone on that came within 1,000 yards (914 metres) of one of its naval
vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, Trump said.
Last week, a British warship in the Gulf
warned off armed Iranian boats that tried to stop a UK supertanker. London has
since announced the deployment of two more warships to the Gulf region for the
coming months.
The US's largest naval base in the Middle
East is located in Bahrain.
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