The softening of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran appears to represent an acknowledgement that they must do all they can to prevent unrest in the Middle East spiralling out of countrol.
The fraught and increasingly dangerous situation in Iraq has produced at least one positive development this year by encouraging long-time rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia to take more of the initiative in defusing tensions in the Middle East.
If the two leading Opec producers build on their recent moves, the prospects for the Persian Gulf and the oil sector are bound to improve as the US proceeds with plans to reduce its military presence in Iraq. But it is far from certain that the budding rapprochement will bear fruit.
Last week, the hardline Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his first official visit to Riyadh, where he appears to have had positive discussions with King Abdullah. Although there wasno official mention of Iran's nuclear programme, the two leaders appear to have agreed to co-operate on other sensitive issues such as Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.
This weekend, Iran will, exceptionally, be attending a gathering of Iraq's neighbours plus the US in Baghdad to discuss ways of stabilising the situation there after nearly four years of mounting mayhem. Iran's presence will be thanks to a reversal of US policy, which had hitherto blamed Tehran for much of its problems in the region while refusing to open a dialogue.
In recent weeks, the Iranians and Saudis have also given the impression of co-operating in Lebanon and over the Palestinian issue. The trouble is that Iran and Saudi Arabia are not natural allies over any of these issues.
US-led military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq following the September 11th terrorist attacks in 2001 have heightened differences by eliminating the Saudi-supported Taliban from the former country and by opening the way in Iraq for majority rule by the Shias.
For the Saudis, as well as for other Arab states such as Jordan and Egypt, which are concerned by rising Persian power in a mostly Arab Middle East, developments in Afghanistan and Iraq so far represent potentially major challenges to the status quo ante.
What is particularly frustrating for the Saudis is that the emergence of Shia and Persian power has not been due to Iranian prowess, but to the US military intervention. And now, having unwittingly set a new political equation for the region, the US is preparing to reduce its military presence perhaps leaving Iran as the dominant power.
Such a prospect has led to all sorts of proposals since last year, with hardline factions in Riyadh and Washington seemingly pushing at one stage for a concerted assault on Iran through a financial squeeze via oil prices and threats of US military strikes.
The latest developments involving the Saudi-Iranian talks and the Baghdad conference suggest the Saudis and perhaps the US have drawn back from extreme scenarios involving financial and military confrontation with Tehran that could only make matters worse.
The Iranians themselves are, of course, feeling besieged and want to prevent both the consolidation of an anti-Iran Arab front and a possible military strike by the US.
Thus the unusual sight of the Iranian and Saudi leaders holding hands in Riyadh and the likelihood of US and Iranian officials soon sitting at the same table in Baghdad.
But none of these developments should yet be interpreted as signs of peace breaking out in the Middle East. Necessity and fear of further regional chaos are encouraging the Saudis and the Iranians to try to work together, but, despite their best intentions, the radical changes wrought accidentally by the US military intervention cannot be undone.
The reality remains that the disappearance of the Taliban and the fall of Saddam Hussein have transformed regional politics, to the detriment of Arab states suspicious of Iran.
Unlike in the past, the Saudis are not prepared to wait for Washington to act and appear to be taking matters into their own hands by launching initiatives with Iran, in Lebanon and in mediating between Hamas and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in the Palestinian territories. But there are limits to Saudi influence and the new realities post September 11th cannot easily, if ever, be reversed.
© Upstream 2007
