Iran
's diplomatic overture to Saudi Arabia this week appeared designed to
smooth over allegations that Tehran had tried to
assassinate a top Saudi envoy, suggesting Iran
is stepping up efforts to safeguard its role as a key Middle
East power player.
Tehran is
already under pressure from the West over its nuclear program. In recent
months, it has come into increasingly pitched diplomatic conflict with Saudi Arabia,
its traditional rival for influence in the region. The goal of this week's
meeting--for which Iranian Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi traveled to Riyadh to meet with the
Saudi Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdel-Aziz Al Saud--appeared aimed at calming
tensions on the nearer front, analysts said.
Iran's
foreign ministry said that during the meeting, the sides discussed regional
security and policies. But the key to the intelligence chief's visit, analysts
said, appeared to be his effort to address U.S.
accusations in October that Iran
plotted to have the Saudi ambassador to Washington
killed.
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"The U.S. has leveled
baseless charges against Iran.
Transparent and frank talks are needed to remove suspicions and clarify what
objectives are sought behind these scenarios," Iran's Foreign Ministry
spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told the state Al-Alam Arabic television channel
on Wednesday. He said Iran
was eager to have friendly relations with its Sunni Arab counterpart.
The Iranian intelligence chief was in Riyadh
representing "the regime, not the government," Iranian media said. That
suggested he was acting not as a messenger of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or
other political figures, whose decisions in Iran
can be overruled by its ruling cleric, but as a messenger for Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is seen as issuing Iran's final word.
Iran and Saudi Arabia, two of the world's top crude-oil
producers, have long stood as polar Mideast
powers. Shiite Iran represents the interests of Shiite minorities that are
often discriminated against in Sunni Arab nations, and champions resistance
against Israel
and the West. Saudi Arabia
is the dominant Sunni power, with favorable relations with the West.
The Arab Spring, which upended old dictators, forced both Iran and Saudi
Arabia to examine alliances and act assertively, and
often at odds with one another, most notably in Bahrain
and Syria.
With Iran already at
loggerheads with the West, its leaders have worried that a continuing rift with
Saudi Arabia would
compromise Tehran's
standing in the region, analysts say.
"Iran will do
everything it can not to lose its position of power in the Middle East,"
said Roozbeh Mirebrahimi, an Iranian journalist and author now living in New York. "It knows
it can't fight the West and the Arabs at the same time."
Iran
has attempted to align itself with antiregime protests across the region this
year, branding them an Islamic awakening inspired by its own 1979 Islamic
revolution. Analysts expect Iran
to seek to influence the course of events in the region's new democracies, as
it did with Iraq after the U.S. invaded in
2003.
Iran funded Islamist
political parties in Iraq
through a sophisticated web of clerics, social workers and mosques, leaving
many indebted to the Islamic Republic for its support and funding. Some Iran analysts say similar efforts are under way
in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. Iranian officials have said
recently that their outlook is positive for closer ties with Egypt's future
government and the two will likely have much in common.
However, there is little natural overlap between the rulers of Iran, who are Shiite Persians, and the Sunni
Arab Islamists who are gaining influence in Egypt
and the other emerging North Africa
democracies.
Islamists gaining influence in these places have said they don't
associate with
Iran's ideals, but rather look for inspiration to Turkey, a secular,
Western-friendly
democracy run by an Islamic-leaning party.
Iran's possession of a downed U.S. drone, which could contain the CIA's secret
surveillance of Iran's nuclear sites, could help boost its image in the Arab
world as technically able to challenge the U.S.'s most sophisticated spying
equipment.
Iran
paraded the drone on national television and boasted that its Revolutionary
Guards and Air Force had technically manipulated the drone and forced it to land.
Iran has refused the U.S.'s request
to return the drone, saying the aircraft is now considered Iranian property.
In Vienna, at Wednesday's meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries, Iran's oil minister Rostam Ghasemi said Iran and Saudi Arabia had
reached a deal that Saudis wouldn't raise their oil production to make up for
Iran's market share in case U.S. and Europe sanction Iran's oil.
It wasn't clear whether there is a connection between the Iran-Saudi meeting
and the OPEC decisions.