At Riyadh summit, Saudi crown prince backs Iran, accuses Israel of genocide
Mohammed bin Salman warns Israel against hitting Islamic Republic, marking turn toward Tehran and away from US-supported normalization with Jerusalem
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.
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.
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.”
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.
