energy facilities<\/a> across Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in retaliation against Israel\u2019s strike on the South Pars gasfield, Iran\u2019s 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.<\/p>\nThe meeting of top diplomats in Riyadh was aimed at mustering a common response to Iran\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
So what happened in Riyadh? How might these countries deal with Iran? And is Iran likely to listen?<\/p>\n
Who was at the Riyadh meeting?<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
What was decided in Riyadh?<\/p>\n
The main takeaway from the meeting was that the 12 countries, which have broadly been sympathetic to Iran in the past, now assert \u201cthe right of states to defend themselves\u201d, citing Article 51 of the United Nations Charter on defensive action.<\/p>\n
They issued a collective condemnation of \u201cdeliberate Iranian attacks\u201d with ballistic missiles and drones that have struck a range of targets, including residential areas, water desalination plants, oil facilities, airports and diplomatic positions.<\/p>\n
Foreign ministers called on Iran to:<\/p>\n
Halt its attacks.
\nStop \u201cprovocative actions or threats\u201d aimed at its neighbours.
\nCease supporting, financing and arming pro-Iran proxy groups based in Arab states.
\nRefrain from actions or threats aimed at blocking the Strait of Hormuz or threatening maritime security in the Bab al-Mandeb strait.<\/p>\n
They also condemned Israeli attacks on Lebanon and what they described as Israel\u2019s expansionist policies in the region.<\/p>\n
The meeting yielded a unified response to Iran\u2019s increasingly unpredictable behaviour. But the joint statement was vague about how countries would follow this up.<\/p>\n
What happens next?<\/p>\n
Speaking early on Thursday after the meeting finished, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud did not elaborate on when his country might act to rein in Iran. \u201cDo they [the Iranians] have a day, two, a week? I\u2019m not going to telegraph that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
However, he left little room for doubt that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states will act if necessary, adding that they have \u201cvery significant capacities and capabilities that they could bring to bear should they choose to do so\u201d.<\/p>\n
Emphasising his country\u2019s right to defend itself, he said he hoped Iran had got the message and its leaders would \u201crecalculate quickly and stop attacking their neighbours\u201d.<\/p>\n
But he added: \u201cI am doubtful they have that wisdom.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Saudi foreign minister said that while the war would eventually come to an end, it will take time to restore relations with Iran because trust has been \u201cshattered\u201d.<\/p>\n
Saudi Arabia\u2019s relations with Iran have historically been rocky, but the two countries embarked on a Beijing-brokered rapprochement three years ago.<\/p>\n
Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera\u2019s Ali Hashem said the Saudi response \u201ccould be read as the end of the beginning of the Iranian-Saudi normalisation that started just a few years ago\u201d.<\/p>\n
How is Iran likely to respond?<\/p>\n
With much of its leadership gone, the question of who is calling the shots in Iran is unclear.<\/p>\n
New Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not been seen in public since he was appointed to succeed his assassinated father, had never held government office before taking the top job.<\/p>\n
Late on Wednesday, his official Telegram channel read: \u201cEvery drop of spilled blood comes at a price, and the criminal murderers of these martyrs will soon have to pay it.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Iranian government figures, 1,444 people have been killed in US-Israeli strikes on Iran so far, with 18,551 injured.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) issued a statement saying: \u201cOperation True Promise 4 against oil facilities associated with the US in the region was conducted with strength,\u201d dedicating it to Khatib and \u201cmartyrs of the intelligence community\u201d.<\/p>\n
The statement, cited by Iran\u2019s IRGC-affiliated Tasnim news agency on Thursday, said Iranian forces had responded to the \u201cdeceiving and lying enemy\u201d that had targeted energy facilities in the country, referring to an Israeli strike on South Pars.<\/p>\n
It added that it did not \u201cwish to harm the economies of friendly neighbouring countries\u201d but it had \u201centered a new phase of warfare\u201d to defend Iran\u2019s infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Commenting on the escalation, Al Jazeera\u2019s Hashem said: \u201cIt\u2019s not any more the Iran that we know. There\u2019s a new leadership, there\u2019s a new mentality and the main issue is that Iran is now in the middle of a war.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the United States-Israeli war on Iran approaches its fourth week after unleashing chaos across the Middle East,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[949,1407,453,3323,1029,8,1205,3324,35,273,246,9,1425,279,7,2209],"class_list":{"0":"post-7117","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-asia","9":"tag-azerbaijan","10":"tag-bahrain","11":"tag-egypt","12":"tag-explainer","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-islamic-revolutionary-guard-corps","15":"tag-jordan","16":"tag-kuwait","17":"tag-lebanon","18":"tag-middle-east","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-pakistan","21":"tag-qatar","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-us-israel-war-on-iran"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116256190130418131","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}