Israel has been coordinating with Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia to demonise Turkey, which Israel’s Mossad Chief Yossi Cohen believes a “bigger threat”.
Roger Boyes wrote for the Sunday Times that Cohen discussed the Turkish threat with intelligence officials from Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia about two years ago.
“Iranian power is fragile,” Boyes reported Cohen telling officials from the three Arab countries, “but the real threat is from Turkey.”
According to Boyes, Cohen’s point “was not that Iran had ceased to be an existential menace but rather that it could be contained: through sanctions, embargoes, intelligence sharing and clandestine raids.”
However, “Turkey’s coercive diplomacy, its sloppily calculated risk-taking across the Middle East, posed a different kind of challenge to strategic stability in the eastern Mediterranean.”
Boyes expected the geopolitics of the Middle East to change as a result of the warning as the EU and US would be more willing to involve themselves if Israel is under threat.
Israel’s concern with Turkey: Libya in the west, Azerbaijan in the east
