Israel, Saudi hold secret meetings over Iran's nuke programme

Israel and Saudi Arabia have been holding secret meetings including in India to address the "common threat" posed by the Iranian nuclear programme, signalling the emergence of a new alignment between the Jewish state and the Arab world.
An extremely unusual public meeting of high-ranking Israeli and Saudi officials took place in Washington yesterday when the incoming director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Dore Gold, shared a stage and shook hands, with a retired Saudi General, Anwar Eshki, who is also a former top advisor to the Saudi government, the Times of Israel reported today.
The two senior officials in their back-to-back addresses to the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations think tank also espoused Israeli-Saudi peace and identified Iran as the chief threat to regional stability, the website said.

Much of the Arab world, including Saudi Arabia, does not recognise Israel but reports of such clandestine meetings have been abuzz recently in view of the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear programme which is seen by many Arab countries as an effort to establish its hegemony in the region.
Eshki is said to haves spoken at length of Iran's hostile and aggressive actions in the region and signalled that peace with Israel, based on the Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative, was a top priority.
He also spoke of the need for a joint Arab military force to increase regional stability.

Gold, who is expected to be confirmed as the Director General of the Foreign Ministry, also spoke of the challenge posed to the Middle East by Iran and warned of a weak nuclear accord with Tehran which would leave the Islamic republic as a nuclear threshold state.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg News reported that the two countries have held five clandestine meetings over the past 17 months in India, Italy and Czech Republic to discuss the threat posed by Iran.
The long rumoured back-channel talks between Jerusalem and Riyadh have never been officially confirmed.
"We discovered we have the same problems and same challenges and some of the same answers," Shimon Shapira, described by Bloomberg as an expert on Lebanese terror group Hezbollah who took part in the meetings said.

While Gold and Eshki stressed they were not speaking as official representatives of their nations, but rather as foreign policy experts, they expressed hope that their states could find common ground in the face of regional challenges.
"Our standing today on this stage does not mean we have resolved all the differences that our countries have shared over the years," Gold reportedly said adding, "But our hope is we will be able to address them fully in the years ahead".
While stopping short of fully endorsing the Arab Peace Initiative, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week said that he welcomed the general idea behind the initiative.