BICOM

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will travel to Europe next week to discuss Iran with German, French and British leaders.

“I will discuss with them how to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions and how to stop Iranian expansion in the Middle East,” Netanyahu said. He will meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Tuesday and Wednesday, before meeting British Prime Minister Theresa May in London on Thursday.

Israel’s Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman will meet his Russian counterpart in Moscow today to reach an agreement for Syrian regime forces to take up positions close to the Israeli border in southern Syria.

The agreement will allow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces to return to the border area in exchange for Russian guarantees that Iranian and Hezbollah forces will be kept away. Director of Military Intelligence Maj. Gen. Tamir Heiman and Zohar Palti, Director of the Political-Security Office in the Defence Ministry, will also travel to Russia for the meeting.

The Moscow meeting follows what Israel’s Channel 2 News described as a diplomatic breakthrough in a phone call between Lieberman and Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoygu on Friday.

Two thousand Iranian soldiers are estimated to be in Syria, many of them members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). A further 7,000 Hezbollah fighters and approximately 30,000 fighters in Shia militias from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq have also been fighting on the side of Assad in the Syrian civil war.

Israel’s National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat has been in Washington since Monday for talks with his newly appointed US counterpart John Bolton, also to discuss Iran, following the US decision to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement.

Ben-Shabbart and Bolton have discussed renewing a memorandum of understanding regarding a joint policy towards Iran, as well as the establishment of working groups to handle various aspects of the Iranian threat.

One such working group, Israel’s Channel 10 reported, was to deal with Iranian activity in Syria, another with Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions, a third with Iran’s ballistic missile programme and a fourth team will oversee preparation for any escalation by Iran or Hezbollah.