As the United States-Israeli war on Iran approaches its fourth week after unleashing chaos across the Middle East, foreign ministers from Arab and Muslim countries have convened for urgent discussions in Saudi Arabia.
Talks were held on Wednesday as Iran was targeting several energy facilities across Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in retaliation against Israel’s strike on the South Pars gasfield, Iran’s biggest source of energy. That attack came during a week marked by Israeli assassinations of top Iranian security official Ali Larijani, Basij paramilitary commander Gholamreza Soleimani and intelligence chief Esmail Khatib. The meeting of top diplomats in Riyadh was aimed at mustering a common response to Iran’s increasing retaliation against US assets and infrastructure in the region, which not only threatens regional stability but is also causing disruptions to the global economy.
So what happened in Riyadh? How might these countries deal with Iran? And is Iran likely to listen? A joint statement issued on Thursday confirmed that foreign ministers from Qatar, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkiye and the United Arab Emirates attended the meeting on Wednesday.
All these countries have been impacted by the war, whether in terms of direct attacks from Iran, secondary threats from falling debris, dwindling energy supplies or looming mass displacement if the war continues.
Lebanon, in particular, has suffered heavy casualties since Hezbollah began strikes on Israel on March 2 in retaliation for its killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on the first day of the war two days earlier. Israel has carried out strikes in Lebanon that have killed at least 968 people in less than three weeks and has also launched a ground invasion in southern Lebanon. The main takeaway from the meeting was that the 12 countries, which have broadly been sympathetic to Iran in the past, now assert “the right of states to defend themselves”, citing Article 51 of the United Nations Charter on defensive action.
They issued a collective condemnation of “deliberate Iranian attacks” with ballistic missiles and drones that have struck a range of targets, including residential areas, water desalination plants, oil facilities, airports and diplomatic positions.
Source: Here
