With the administration of US President Donald Trump forming a new policy towards the Middle East, Defense Secretary General James Mattis arrived in Israel Thursday afternoon to discuss regional security issues with top officials on Friday, with Iran topping the list.Greeted by members of the American embassy in Tel Aviv and the Israeli army’s defense attaché in Washington, Gen. Mickey Edelstein, Mattis arrived from Cairo on his third leg of a 5 country Middle-East tour billed by the Pentagon to discuss to “defeat extremist terror organizations”. Mattis and Liberman, who met in Washington in March have already discussed issues such as the ongoing civil war in Syria and the threats posed by Iran, and the Israeli Defense Minister will brief him against on the numerous threats to Israel in the region, including on its northern border where there is a growing presence of Hezbollah and Iran in Syria. Known as a hawk on issues related to Iran, last month in London Mattis recalled a statement he made in 2012 in which he stated that the three gravest threats to American national security were “Iran, Iran, Iran”, an echo of Liberman’s statement at the Munich Security Conference in February that main challenges facing the region were “Iran, Iran, Iran.”At the time when I spoke about Iran I was a commander of US central command and [saying] that (Iran) was the primary exporter of terrorism, frankly, it was the primary state sponsor of terrorism and it continues that kind of behavior today”, Mattis said in March.After his visit to Israel, Mattis will head to Qatar.
