Henry Kissinger says President Joe Biden should continue to put pressure on Iran and uphold the “brilliant” progress made by the Trump administration with Israel and the Gulf states.
"I think that one of the great successes of the previous administration was that they had lined up, that they had achieved two things in the Middle East," Kissinger, the former secretary of state for both Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, said Wednesday during a series of foreign affairs talks sponsored by the Nixon Foundation.
"One, to separate the Palestinian problem from all of the other problems so that it did not become a veto over everything else — and secondly, of lining up the Sunni states in actual or potential combination against the Shiite states, which is Iran, that was developing a capacity to threaten them. I think that this was a brilliant concept. We were just at the beginning of it."
The Trump administration late last year established normalization agreements between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco, the first of their kind in more than 25 years.
The connections also strengthen Israel and the Gulf states’ defenses against Iran, which the Trump administration sanctioned in an effort to slow the Iranian economy and halt the Iranian nuclear program.
"We should not give up the pressures that exist on Iran until we know where they are heading," Kissinger said. "If we break out the Iranian issue from the overall Middle Eastern issue, we run the risk of losing the two achievements, namely of separating the Palestinian issue, which removes it as a veto over everything else, and the Sunni cooperation with Israel, which is unique in its openness."
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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