Liberman Urges Mattis To Keep American Military ‘Active’ In Middle East
Image by Getty Images
By Ron Kampeas March 8, 2017
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman told U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis that the United States needs to remain active in the Middle East to ensure security and stability.
Liberman met Tuesday with Mattis at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. According to an Israeli Defense Ministry readout, the meeting was friendly and covered strategic challenges in the region — including in Syria, where a civil war is raging, and Iran, which Israel and a number of moderate Arab countries see as a growing threat. The men discussed the creation of a coalition of moderate states in the region to combat terrorism.
“We need an active America in our region,” Liberman told Mattis, according to the Israeli release.
In December, before President Donald Trump took office, Liberman said that he was wary of the new president’s declared desire to pull back from the Middle East.
The Israeli Defense Ministry release said Liberman raised a specific concern that the Hezbollah militia, which launched a war with Israel in 2006, was insinuating itself into Lebanon’s army.
The U.S. Department of Defense did not issue a readout of the meeting.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
