He arrived in Jordan on Sunday for a regional tour which will also take him to Egypt and Israel. A displacement against a backdrop of tensions: Iran’s nuclear program worries Washington’s allies and the repeated violence in the occupied West Bank raises fears of a conflagration.
In Jordan, the US Secretary of Defense heard King Abdullah speak of “ regional stability threatened by the current outbreak of violence in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel. Washington continues to show its disapproval of the decisions and inflammatory statements of the current far-right government in Israel.
Last week, the State Department called it ” irresponsible “, of ” repugnant ” and of ” disgusting ” the words of Minister Betzalel Smotrich who had called for “ to shave the Palestinian village of Huwara, before recanting.
In this explosive context, American officials follow one another in the region: after the security adviser Jake Sullivan and the head of diplomacy Antony Blinken, it is therefore the turn of the Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. With the Israeli leaders, he will also discuss Iran’s nuclear program while Tehran keeps getting closer to nuclear weapons (the IAEA indicates that it has detected in Iran traces of uranium enriched to more than 83%, that is to say very close to military quality) and that Israel is credited with the project of launching a preventive attack against Iranian nuclear facilities.