In a sign of shifting diplomatic alignments following the Hamas terrorist attacks last weekend, Tehran said this afternoon that Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi held a telephone call with Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman.
Raisi’s deputy chief of staff, Mohammad Jamshidi, posted a short readout to Twitter, saying that the leaders: “agreed on the need to end war crimes against Palestine.” It added: “Islamic unity was stressed & both believed the regime’s crimes & the US green light will cause destructive insecurity for the regime & backers.”
The Saudi side has yet to publish its own summary, but Al Arabiya reported that MBS stressed the need to observe international and humanitarian law and to stop Israel’s strikes on Gaza.
That fits with the tack that his government has taken in recent days. Immediately after the attacks began on Saturday, the Saudi foreign ministry released a statement that neither condemned the attacks nor named Hamas directly. It instead leveled implicit blame at Israel for bringing on the terrorist massacre “as a result of the continued occupation, the deprivation of the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights, and the repetition of systematic provocations against its sanctities.”
During a phone call with Secretary of State Antony Blinken the following day, Saudi foreign minister Faisal bin Farhan used slightly stronger language to refer to the Hamas attacks, saying that the kingdom rejects “targeting civilians in any way” and stressed that “all parties” need to respect international humanitarian law, according to his ministry’s summary.
Those statements were both indications that while Saudi Arabia has previously entertained normalization talks with Israel, it would not put that above its previous commitments to Palestinians. It’s also worth viewing the Iran–Saudi call in the context of some of the biggest developments in the region from the past year. The Saudi–Iranian normalization agreement brokered by China this year set off a political shock wave, indicating that Riyadh is more than willing to re-evaluate its options in response to recent criticism from Washington over its handling of human rights.
Today’s call might be further indication that the Saudi–Israeli normalization agreement sought by those countries and the Biden administration could be a dead end in the wake of the Hamas assault. It’s one more data point hinting at continued rapprochement between Tehran and Riyadh, with historical enemies on opposite sides of several grueling proxy wars now consulting each other on an issue of mutual concern: pressing Israel to halt its strikes against Hamas targets in Gaza.