TEHRAN: Iran on Saturday angrily accused Bahrain of stirring instability after US President Donald Trump announced Manama and Israel were opening ties in a landmark deal that reinforces America's push to redraw Middle East conflicts. Calling it a "truly historic day," Trump said on Friday that Israel and Bahrain were establishing full diplomatic and commercial relations. "They will exchange embassies and ambassadors, begin direct flights between their countries and launch cooperation initiatives across a broad range of sectors, including health, business, technology, education, security and agriculture," he said.
Bahrain said in a joint statement it had agreed to formalise the deal with Israel at a ceremony Tuesday in the White House, where the United Arab Emirates will also sign off on its own thaw with Israel announced in mid-August. Shiite Iran, which has especially tense ties with Bahrain and is a sworn enemy of the United States, slammed its Gulf neighbour over the deal. "The rulers of Bahrain will from now on be partners to the crimes of the Zionist regime as a constant threat to the security of the region and the world of Islam," it said. Bahrainis opposed to the agreement vented their frustration on social media, using the hashtags "Bahrainis against normalisation" and "normalisation is betrayal". "A black day in the history of Bahrain," wrote former lawmaker Ali Alaswad. Turkey also condemned the deal, saying it undermined the Palestinian cause. "The step will be a fresh blow to efforts to defend the Palestinian cause and will further embolden Israel to continue its illegal practices toward Palestine and its attempts to make the occupation of Palestinian territories permanent," it said. Bahrain, a Sunni-ruled kingdom with a large Shiite population, relies heavily on the United States, which stations its Fifth Fleet in the tiny but strategic Gulf archipelago. The joint statement said Bahrain's King Hamad, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump had spoken hours before announcing the new breakthrough. It said during the phone call, the king "stressed the need to reach a just and comprehensive peace as a strategic option, in accordance with the two-state solution and relevant resolutions of international legitimacy". A senior official in Manama said the deal would boost regional "security, stability, prosperity". Until now, Israel had been able to strike just two peace accords with Arab countries -- Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994 -- and Trump is hoping the latest deals will give him badly needed momentum going into the November 3 presidential election. At the White House, Trump called the development "very, very important for not only the Middle East, but for the world". "When I took office, the Middle East was in a state of absolute chaos," he said. In Jerusalem, Netanyahu hailed the agreement.
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