US, Israel likely beneficiaries of Egypt, Jordan’s overtures to Iraq: Expert

Egypt and Jordan’s rare recent overtures to Iraq is likely seeking to realize the United States and Israel’s past and present plans for Baghdad, a seasoned Iraqi political and strategy analyst tells Press TV.

Mahdi Abdul-Raza Saqafi, a member of the Iraqi Hadaf Strategic Studies Institute and a legal expert, made the remarks in an interview with our network on Sunday following a surprise tripartite summit among the Iraqi, Egyptian, and Jordanian statesmen in Baghdad.

The trio, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and Jordan’s King Abdullah II met earlier in the day, during the first visit by an Egyptian head of state to the Arab country since 1990.

Egypt, Jordan and Iraq hold tripartite summit in Baghdad to mend fences, boost economic ties

Egypt

The expert said potentially “the most important political goal” that was sought by the meeting was realization of former US president Donald Trump’s “New Levant Initiative (NLI)” concerning Iraq and elimination of the standing obstacles in the way of normalization of ties between Baghdad and Tel Aviv through Cairo and Amman’s facilitation.

The NLI was devised to turn Iraq away from Iran and bring it rather close to Egypt and Jordan. As part of the initiative, Trump pressured Kadhimi during a 2020 visit to work harder to connect the country’s electricity grid to those of the other two.

However, more than turning to Iraq’s benefit in the economic and energy sectors, the initiative rather turns the country away from strong and productive countries such as the Islamic Republic, Russia, and China, Saqafi said. It rather “causes the Iraqis’ wealth to flow towards the Israeli regime so the regime further befriends these two allies of its, namely Egypt and Jordan,” he added.

This is while both Egypt and Jordan were economically miserable, he said, noting that the former was looking towards the US for economic assistance, and the latter’s debt ran as high as $150 billion.

Saudi position

Saqafi also weighed in on Saudi Arabia’s position concerning the overtures, saying the Saudi kingdom would be trying to draw benefit from the meeting.

He reminded Cairo and Amman’s economic dependence on the Saudi kingdom. He said Riyadh could use the weak point to have the two intervene to restore the kingdom’s relatins with Washington to their Trump-era glory.

He noted how Joe Biden’s victory in the US’s presidential elections retraced some of the steps that Trump had taken in favor of Saudi Arabia, and how Riyadh was desirous of repairing the damage.

Targeting regional resistance

The underway developments were, meanwhile, aimed at the regional resistance movements given their recent achievements in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and against the Takfiri terrorist group of Daesh, the analyst said.

The resistance groups’ alignment with their fellow Palestinian fighters was another reason for the campaign to try and target them, he added.

As an instance of the solidarity, he cited the resistance groups’ support for the Palestinian movements’ successful operations against the Israeli regime during Tel Aviv’s recent war on the Gaza Strip.

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