In his annual address to the Shura Council, the top government advisory department of Saudi Arabia on 12th November, its King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud pressed the world for taking a “decisive stance” against Iran over its nuclear weapons and missile producing programs.
The King in his statement given to the council members through a video link from his Neom palace highlighted the dangers posed by Iran and the projects it has undertaken along with its “fostering of terrorism and fanning flames of sectarianism”. The leader called for a decisive stance from the countries around the globe in the Iran matter “that guarantees a drastic handling of its efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction and develop its ballistic missiles programme.”
After his September’s address in the UN General Assembly, this was the King first public summation of comments. In his previous statements, he had targeted Iran while condemning its “expansionism”.
Saudi Arabia and Iran, the Sunni Muslim-dominated and Shia Muslim-majority nations respectively, have been on opposite terms on many issues like the situation in Yemen where a union headed by the Kingdom is battling the Tehran-led Houthi movement since the past 5 years.
Iran did not immediately respond to the comments of the King. However, it had termed King’s remarks during the UN assembly as “baseless allegations”, while also denying role in providing weapons to the terror groups in the Middle East.
State news agency SPA published the complete statement of the King post-midnight and the state television displayed the pictures associated with the address.
The array of tensions were set loose after the US President Donald Trump in 2018 withdrew the registry of his nation from the landmark nuclear deal made with the world powers and instead levied severe economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
Saudi Arabia continued to gain criticism due to Riyadh’s rights record that heightened after the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist of the Kingdom, the nation’s involvement in the battle of Yemen and the inhuman detention of woman activists.
However, Joe Biden, the US President-elect promised to work on the relationship of US with Saudi as the country is also a major oil exporter and customer of US’s arms and weapons.
The Kingdom remained an ardent lover of Trump’s “maximum pressure” on Iran movement but will now have to let go of that campaign as the President-elect iterated that he will sign the pact to bring the US under the nuclear treaty again with the other world powers and Iran. This pact is the one made during the term of Barack Obama when Biden was the vide-president.
While the King said Saudi is continuously supporting UN-led efforts in order to attain political peace in Yemen, he also criticized the Houthi movement’s alleged “deliberate and methodological” aiming of Saudi citizens through the use of drones and ballistic missiles.
He pointed out that the Kingdom is trying to ensure the world’s consumers and producers receive enough oil despite the effect of the pandemic on the market.
King Salman spoke about his support regarding the two-state proposal to Palestine and Israel but chose not to mention the normalization agreements signed by the US, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan for recognizing Israel.
