From The Guardian UK
By Dilip Hiro

The Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s eight-hour trip to Riyadh on Saturday to meet King Abdullah marked an important milestone in the relations between their countries, which in the past have oscillated between competition and cooperation.

After their talks, centred round Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinians, the two leaders displayed mutual warmth as they embraced and smiled to cameras.

This enabled Ahmadinejad to declare on his return to Tehran that,

“Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are aware of the enemies’ conspiracies. We decided to take measures to confront such plots. Hopefully, this will strengthen Muslim countries against oppressive pressure by the imperialist front.”

Allowing for the customary bluster with which Ahmadinejad expresses himself, it seems that he and the Saudi king resolved to counter the efforts being made to accentuate Sunni-Shia relations in Iraq and Lebanon for the good of the region in particular and the Muslim world at large.

Specifically, they examined ways of ending the political stalemate in Lebanon between the Washington-backed government of Fouad Siniora, and the Tehran-backed Hizbullah. They also discussed ways of de-escalating the Sunni-Shia violence in Iraq - an aim which they, incidentally, share with the United States.

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