Iranian President expected in Saudi Arabia

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad begins his first official visit to Saudi Arabia today, a trip that many in the region hope will help calm sectarian tensions threatening the Middle East as well as conflicts in Iraq and Lebanon.

Ahmadinejad is expected in the Saudi capital this afternoon for talks with the Saudi monarch, King Abdullah. This is Ahmadinejad’s first official trip to the kingdom. The Iranian president visited the kingdom in December 2005 but only to participate in an Islamic summit in the holy city of Mecca.

Ahmadinejad’s trip comes amid rapid developments that threaten to further isolate his country and place it under punitive sanctions because of its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment.

Today top diplomats from the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany will try to reach agreement on new sanctions against Iran. A US official predicted the session would lead to a “substantive resolution”.

The push for new sanctions follows an International Atomic Energy Agency report in late February that Iran was expanding enrichment instead of suspending it.

At the same time, the US has been beefing up its military presence in the Gulf in the past two months. Although Washington has said it has no plans to strike Iran, it has also refused to rule out any option.

Regionally, most Arab governments, which are overwhelmingly Sunni, have signalled impatience and worry over mostly Shiite Iran’s backing of co-religionists in Iraq and Lebanon, saying such support can only destabilise the region.

Iran is a strong backer of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which is striving to bring down the US- and Saudi-backed Lebanese government. Iran also has close ties to Shiite political parties in Iraq, and Washington accuses it of backing Shiite militias there.

Arab officials have pointed out that while Shiites are a majority in Iran and Iraq, they make up only 15% of the world’s Muslim population, and sectarian tensions could ultimately work against the groups which Iran supports.

Dawood al-Shirian, a Saudi journalist and analyst, said: “The visit should be viewed with optimism,” especially since it culminates weeks of talks between the two countries.

He said that if Riyadh was not sure that the talks will be successful, it would not have held it now.

“Saudi Arabia is not a politically bankrupt country looking for a show for its foreign policies,” he said. “If it didn’t know that the visit would add to its political achievements, it wouldn’t have been enthusiastic about it.”

Saudi newspapers, which are government-guided, struck a welcoming tone in editorials, saying they hoped Ahmadinejad’s visit signals an Iranian willingness to revise its regional policies and work with, rather than against, Arab governments.