A Summit of Sorts

On another note, it is fascinating to see that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Riyadh, and that Saudi King Abdullah personally met him at the airport. In recent years, working in South Asia and the Middle East, I've repeatedly heard people say that sectarian conflicts in Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere were a function of a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran for primacy in the Muslim world--as touched on in Bobby Ghosh's fine piece focused on the Sunni-Shia divide in Iraq --and that the Saudis had generally gained the upper hand because they have so much more money to spend on the project (Vali Nasr's The Shia Revival is very good on this). A simplification, to a degree, but it represents a strongly-held, widely-accepted belief on the streets and in the halls of power in a number of countries, often expressed with supreme conviction.

With the Saudis feeling ascendant and getting more involved in various efforts to counter Iranian influence (brokering the Fatah-Hamas agreement, for instance, and hosting an upcoming Arab summit), and with Ahmadinejad still feeling his oats, even if he's stirred up some resentment at home and further U.N. sanctions on Iran seem likely, this meeting was akin to a summit meeting between the two leading poles (and pols) of the Muslim world. I don't know how much we'll learn about what Ahmadinejad and King Abdullah discussed, but a little miscommunication seems to have emerged already, just a day later. The Iranians are apparently denying a report that appeared in the Saudi media that Tehran would support the 2002 Arab peace initiative, which called for pan-Arab recognition of Israel if Israel withdrew to its 1967 borders.

The Israelis, not incidentally, would be unlikely to ever accept the initiative as is, no matter who signed on, because they would never accept clauses that supported the right of return for Palestinian refugees. But they might well be concerned that a unified Arab negotiating position, headed by a U.S. ally, would create uncomfortable pressure on them heading into any prospective negotiations. They might well feel the same way about the prospective Palestinian unity government, if it actually comes together, because even if Hamas as a party does not accept the demand that it recognize Israel and forswear violence, some governments, particularly European ones anxious to see some motion on the peace process and alleviate the financial hardships faced by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, might advocate dealing with the unity government as it is. That concern might be behind the dispatch of to Washington of two senior aides to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who are reportedly going to firm up support for not talking to the Palestinians until the Quartet demands are met.
--Phil Zabriskie / Jerusalem