MAKKAH: King Salman bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia accused Iran of developing nuclear and ballistic missiles which threaten regional and global stability, telling regional leaders action is needed to stop Iranian “escalations” following a series of attacks on oil assets in the Gulf, Al Jazeera has reported.
Saudi Arabia hosted in Makkah emergency meetings of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and Arab League to counter what it said was Iran’s growing influence. A Gulf-Arab statement and a separate communiqué issued after the wider summit both supported the right of Saudi Arabia and the UAE to defend their interests after the attacks on oil pumping stations in the kingdom and tankers off the UAE.
Qatar’s Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani attended the meeting, the highest Qatari official to visit the kingdom since Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt imposed a land, sea, and air blockade in June 2017. Video images of Thursday’s gathering showed Sheikh Abdullah shaking King Salman’s hand.
Iraq, which has good ties with Iran and the US, said it objected to the Arab communiqué, which stated that any cooperation with Tehran should be based on “non-interference in other countries”.
King Salman pressed the international community to “use all means to stop Iran from interfering in other countries’ affairs”. He said Iran’s actions threatened international maritime trade and global oil supplies in a “glaring violation of UN treaties”. “This is naked aggression against our stability and international security,” he said. Iran’s “recent criminal acts … require that all of us work seriously to preserve the security… of GCC countries”, the king added.
Iran has rejected what it calls “baseless” accusations made at the Arab summit and said Saudi Arabia had joined the US and Israel in a “hopeless’ effort to mobilise regional opinion against Tehran, state news agency IRNA reported.
The agency said: “Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi … rejected the baseless accusations by the heads of certain Arab countries … and said: ‘We see the Saudi effort to mobilise [regional] opinion as part of the hopeless process followed by America and the Zionist regime against Iran’.”