Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler on Monday called on Israel to respect
Iran’s sovereignty and refrain from attacking Iranian soil, while
appearing to step up criticism of Jerusalem, accusing it of genocide.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made the comments at a summit of
Arab and Muslim leaders organized to press for the establishment of a
Palestinian state, a year after the Arab League and the Organization of
Islamic Cooperation held a first conference on the subject.
Mohammed told the summit that the international community should
oblige Israel “to respect the sovereignty of the sisterly Islamic
Republic of Iran and not to violate its lands.”
Speaking days after Americans voted to send former president Donald
Trump back to the White House, Mohammed also appeared to harden the
kingdom’s rhetoric against Israel, signaling that Riyadh may be moving
further away from US efforts to broker a normalization deal with
Jerusalem.
Mohammed told leaders gathered in Riyadh that the kingdom renewed
“its condemnation and categorical rejection of the genocide committed by
Israel against the brotherly Palestinian people, which has claimed the
lives of 150,000 martyrs, wounded and missing, most of whom are women
and children.”
“We affirm that Israel’s continued crimes against innocent people,
its persistence in violating the sanctity of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque,
and its detraction from the pivotal role of the Palestinian National
Authority in all Palestinian territories will undermine the efforts
aimed at obtaining the Palestinian people’s legitimate rights and
establishing peace in the region,” he added.
A handout picture provided by the Saudi
Press Agency SPA shows Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, center,
posing for a group picture with leaders from member states of the
Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Arab League during
their joint extraordinary summit in Riyadh on November 11, 2024.
Some 43,000 people have been killed during Israel’s offensive in
Gaza, according to figures provided by the Hamas terror group that
cannot be verified, and do not differentiate between combatants and
civilians. Israel denies the charges of genocide and says it implements
measures to minimize harm to noncombatants.
The war began with Hamas’s brutal October 7, 2023, onslaught in
southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and abducting 251 as hostages to
Gaza. Israel responded by vowing to destroy the terror group ruling the
Strip, and free the hostages.
Before the war against Hamas began, Saudi Arabia was in talks about a
so-called mega-deal that would have seen it recognize Israel in
exchange for deeper security and bilateral ties with the United States.
That would have built on the Abraham Accords brokered during Trump’s
first term as president, which saw the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain,
Sudan and Morocco agree to normalize relations with Israel.
However, Riyadh has also moved to patch up ties with Iran after a March 2023 rapprochement deal brokered by China.
The restored ties between Riyadh and Tehran have reshaped the
diplomatic landscape, which Trump will have to reckon with when he takes
office again next year, said H.A. Hellyer, Middle East expert at the
Royal United Services Institute.
“Clearly Riyadh and Tehran are warming their relationship, and this
is a very different regional environment as compared to when Trump was
last in office,” Hellyer said.
“Trump may want to expand the Abraham Accords when he takes office
next year, but unless Israel changes tack drastically in the region,
that’s going to [be] fraught with many more challenges than last time,”
he said.
Iran and Saudi Arabia severed ties in 2016 following attacks on Saudi
diplomatic missions in the Islamic Republic during protests over
Riyadh’s execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. Relations had already
been frayed by Saudi Arabia’s mobilization of a military coalition to
counter Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.
An anti-Israel sign is displayed in Tehran’s Palestine Square on October 1, 2024.
Though issues remain in the complex relationship, the rapprochement
amounts to a signature diplomatic achievement for Mohammed, who has
taken a more conciliatory approach to regional diplomacy in recent
years.
Saudi Arabia and Iran have maintained high-level contacts as part of what they say are efforts to contain the war in Gaza.
At the same time, Iranian proxy groups and Iran itself have attempted
to expand the war by launching attacks on Israel from around the Middle
East, including a ballistic missile fired at central Israel from Yemen
earlier Monday.
Israel has said it will respond if Iran goes through with threats to
attack the country in retaliation for Israeli strikes on military sites
on October 26. The Israeli sorties came after Iran fired some 200
ballistic missiles at cities across Israel on October 1.
The warning against hitting Iran appeared to mark a shift since
April, when Saudi Arabia reportedly allowed its airspace to be used to
counter a volley of hundreds of drones and missiles fired by Iran at
Israel.
Both Hamas and Hezbollah, a Lebanese terror group that Israel is
fighting to halt over a year of incessant rocket fire, are backed by
Iran, and had previously been blacklisted by Saudi Arabia as terror
groups.
In an earlier sign of Saudi Arabia’s shifting positions, Riyadh said in October it was revoking the license of Saudi-owned news broadcaster MBC after it called slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar a terrorist.
At the summit Monday, Iranian First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref
claimed Israel’s assassinations of Sinwar and Hezbollah leader Hassan
Nasrallah were “nothing but lawlessness and organized terrorism.”
A handout picture provided by the Saudi
Press Agency SPA on November 11, 2024, shows Saudi Deputy Governor of
the Riyadh region Prince Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Abdulaziz (R)
welcoming Iran’s Vice President Mohammed Reza Aref upon his arrival in
Riyadh ahead of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Arab
League joint extraordinary leaders summit.
He also said the international community was expecting Trump to end Israel’s wars against Hamas and Hezbollah.
“The American government is the main supporter of the actions of the
Zionist regime, and the world is waiting for the promise of the new
government of this country to immediately stop the war against the
innocent people of Gaza and Lebanon,” Aref told the joint Arab League
and Organization of Islamic Cooperation summit.
On Sunday, Saudi Arabia’s top military official, Fayyad al-Ruwaili,
arrived in Tehran for talks with Iranian officials, weeks after Saudi
Arabia announced it had held war games with Iran and other countries in
the Sea of Oman.
Mohammed and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian spoke by phone on Sunday ahead of the summit.
Pezeshkian is not attending because of pressing “executive matters,” an Iranian government statement said.
1 comment:
He is a lying sack of shit.
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