Former Qatar PM: Netanyahu using Iran war to reshape Middle East

The United States-Israel war on Iran is not the result of a sudden escalation but the culmination of a long-term Israeli agenda to violently reshape the Middle East, former Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani tells Al Jazeera. In a wide-ranging, candid interview on Al Jazeera’s Al Muqabala programme, the veteran diplomat offered a stark assessment of the region’s rapidly shifting geopolitical landscape. He warned that the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz is the most perilous consequence of the recent war, cautioned against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ambitions for a “Greater Israel” and called for the urgent establishment of a unified Gulf defence pact. “We are witnessing a major restructuring of the region,” Sheikh Hamad said, noting that the current geopolitical tremors will dictate the shape of the Middle East for decades to come. Netanyahu’s ‘illusion’ and the US misstep Sheikh Hamad had warned of an impending conflict last year and urged Gulf states to push for a diplomatic resolution to resolve the crisis with Iran and prevent military strikes. He identified a push for a conflict with Iran and blamed it on a “hardline faction” within Israel led by Netanyahu, who he said had been trying to drag the US into a war over Tehran’s nuclear programme since President Bill Clinton’s administration in the 1990s. …