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The leaders of the two Islamic countries gave the impression of putting aside their long-standing animosities at a summit to take a united stance in the face of Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip following the Hamas attack.
By Ahmed Al Omran and Yara Bayoumy
Information from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and Jerusalem
The leaders of Iran and Saudi Arabia, regional rivals who reestablished diplomatic relations this year, met in Riyadh on Saturday at a summit where they called for a quick ceasefire in Gaza and the unconditional delivery of humanitarian aid to the enclave, which Israeli forces besieged since the October 7 attacks by Hamas.
The two Islamic countries, which are opposing factions in proxy conflicts in the region, first announced their diplomatic breakthrough in March, after years of hostility, as part of a deal brokered through China. But it was unclear whether this replacement would lead to lasting détente. between the Sunni monarchy of Saudi Arabia and the Shiite government of Iran.
However, the Israeli bombing of Gaza appears to have accelerated the warming of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, just as delicate international relations had led Saudi Arabia and Israel toward eventual normalization of relations. Iran, whom Israel considers its most damaging enemy, is a tough Hamas boss.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, whose stop in Saudi Arabia was the first by an Iranian president in the kingdom in more than a decade, was greeted at the summit site by Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. On her shoulder is a kaffiyeh, the square black-and-white checkered shawl that bears a badge of Palestinian identity.
The two leaders spoke by phone for the first time a few days after Oct. 7. Iran said in March that Raisi had won an invitation to stop in the kingdom shortly after the two countries announced the resumption of relations.
The war erupted after the Oct. 7 attacks in southern Israel by Hamas, the Palestinian armed organization that controls Gaza, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 240 were taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.
Since then, Israel has bombarded Gaza with thousands of airstrikes, besieged the territory by cutting off water, food, fuel and other necessities, and introduced a ground invasion with the stated aim of destroying Hamas, which Israel and many other countries consider terrorist. organization.
Israel’s air war and artillery movements have killed more than 10,000 Palestinians, many of them young people and women, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Public Health.
At the summit, Raisi criticized the foreign network for what he called a silence on violations against civilians in Gaza. Israel and the United States, its best friend, have so far opposed a ceasefire, saying it would only allow Hamas’ military wing to regroup, even though Israel has agreed to shorten what officials call “humanitarian pauses” to allow others to leave combat zones.
The Saudi crown prince said the crisis had demonstrated “the failure of the Security Council and the network to put an end to Israel’s flagrant violations of the law. “
Arab and Muslim participants at the summit called for an arms embargo on Israel and said regional peace could be achieved without resolving the Palestinian factor on the basis of the two-state solution, a long-standing pillar of diplomatic efforts in the Middle East.
Prince Faisal bin Farhan, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, said the pressure exerted by countries in the region on Israel is beginning to bear fruit.
“We were born to see a change in position, but enough, but going in the right direction,” he told a news conference after the summit. “We were born to hear that countries that used to give Israel a blank check are now talking about civilian coverage and the importance of fighting within the confines of foreign humanitarian law and humanitarian pauses. “
French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday called on Israel to end the massacres in Gaza. Macron expressed strong support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu without delay after the October 7 attacks.
But trust in Israel in the aftermath of those attacks has eroded as photographs emerge daily of the destruction and deaths in Gaza due to the Israeli army’s campaign.
After the Saudi and Iranian leaders finished their speeches, they left the convention hall for a bilateral meeting.
Prince Mohammed’s welcome to Raisi is a notable turnaround for the Saudi leader, who once bluntly warned Iran against pursuing expansionist policies in the region. “We will not wait for war to take hold in Saudi Arabia,” he said in a 2017 television interview. “Instead, we will work to make sure that the war for them is in Iran and not in Saudi Arabia. “
Iran’s once-ideal leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also told Hitler in interviews with U. S. media: “Because it needs to expand, it needs to create its own mission in the Middle East, just like Hitler, who was looking to expand at the time. “” the crown prince told CBS News in 2018.
Kristin Diwan, a senior fellow at the Arab Institute for the Gulf States in Washington, said Riyadh’s consultations with Iran demonstrated the kingdom’s pragmatism.
“They know that Iranian cooperation is to prevent the conflict from spreading and, perhaps, even to succeed in a final phase with Hamas,” Diwan said.
“But with some leaders framed through normalization and others with stricter and not easy measures, Saudi Arabia is well positioned in a middle ground,” he said. “To succeed, they’re going to want Americans to step up their efforts. “
Since the war, Iranian-backed Iraqi and Syrian defense forces have carried out a series of rocket and drone attacks against U. S. forces in Iraq and Syria. Hezbollah, the tough Iranian-backed defense force in Lebanon, has also continued to exchange fire with the Israeli military, raising fears of a wider conflict.
Hamas’ ties with Iran have also evolved in recent years. One of the group’s leaders in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, restored Hamas’ ties with Iran, which had deteriorated in 2012, when Hamas closed its workplace in Syria, a close best friend of Iran. the Syrian civil war.
The recovery has deepened between Hamas’ military wing in Gaza and the so-called Axis of Resistance, Iran’s network of regional militias, according to diplomats and security officials.
Saudi Arabia had originally scheduled two summits for this weekend, one for the Arab League and one for members of the much larger Organization of Islamic Cooperation. But they combined on a single occasion on Saturday, and a new, if superficial, visible unity.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas also attended the summit. The presence of Mr. Assad, whom he has abstained from because of atrocities committed in Syria’s civil war, cemented his return to the regional fold when he joined an annual meeting. Arab leaders’ summit in May for the first time in thirteen years.
Raisi also met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on the sidelines of the summit and discussed the normalization of diplomatic relations between Cairo and Tehran. Iran and Egypt severed ties after the 1979 revolution and soon re-established them under the short-lived presidency of Mohamed Morsi, a senior Muslim Brotherhood leader and Egypt’s first democratically elected president.
Ahmed Al Omran reported from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and Yara Bayoumy from Jerusalem. Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting from New York.
A previous edition of this article incorrectly attributed the origin of rocket and drone attacks on U. S. forces in Iraq and Syria since the start of the war. They were carried out through Iranian-backed Iraqi and Syrian militias; Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed responsibility.
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