Are Saudi-Iran talks hopeless?

Iran-Saudi talks

Saudi Arabia and Iran have engaged in four rounds of talks over the last six months, the most recent of which with the hardliner Ebrahim Raisi already inaugurated as president. A fifth meeting is expected to take place before the end of 2021.

Until now, the negotiations have reportedly revolved around two main issues. The first is the restoration of diplomatic relations between both countries. Bilateral ties were cut off in 2016 when Saudi Arabia executed Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, a Saudi dissident who was a Shia cleric, and protesters in Tehran stormed the Saudi Embassy in retaliation. The second topic of discussion is the Yemen War, which entered a new phase with the 2015 Saudi-led intervention against Houthi rebels who had taken over the Yemeni capital, Sanaa.

For more than one year, the Saudis have been looking for a way out of Yemen. The enormous economic costs of the conflict became more problematic when oil prices fell as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns.

Even after the recovery of the hydrocarbon market, the fact remains that six years of war have not brought Saudi Arabia any closer to its two major goals in Yemen: reestablishing Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi as president and constraining the Houthis’ influence. Furthermore, US President Joe Biden, while not as tough on the kingdom as promised in his election campaign, has been less conciliatory with Saudi Arabia than his predecessor, Donald Trump.

Until now, the negotiations have reportedly revolved around two main issues. The first is the restoration of diplomatic relations between both countries. Bilateral ties were cut off in 2016 when Saudi Arabia executed Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, a Saudi dissident who was a Shia cleric, and protesters in Tehran stormed the Saudi Embassy in retaliation. The second topic of discussion is the Yemen War, which entered a new phase with the 2015 Saudi-led intervention against Houthi rebels who had taken over the Yemeni capital, Sanaa.

For more than one year, the Saudis have been looking for a way out of Yemen. The enormous economic costs of the conflict became more problematic when oil prices fell as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns.

Even after the recovery of the hydrocarbon market, the fact remains that six years of war have not brought Saudi Arabia any closer to its two major goals in Yemen: reestablishing Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi as president and constraining the Houthis’ influence. Furthermore, US President Joe Biden, while not as tough on the kingdom as promised in his election campaign, has been less conciliatory with Saudi Arabia than his predecessor, Donald Trump.

Since the US President Biden came into the power on January 20, 2021, diplomatic efforts to break the ice between longtime regional rivals, Iran and Saudi Arabia, have been intensified. Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi has played a key role in bringing the both state on negotiation table and hosted more than one round of talks between regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia. However, as will be elaborated on in the next sections, talks are not progressing in a fluid manner, mainly due

Distrust the main issue

Despite initial willingness and progress, distrust remains a major issue and obstacle to talks, and is one of the most prominent reasons why talks have stalled in recent months.

Iran said on Monday that further talks with Saudi Arabia aimed at reducing tension between the Gulf’s rival Sunni and Shi’ite Muslim powers depend on Riyadh’s “seriousness”.

The latest round of talks, held at the level of experts in Amman, ended on December 13 and touched upon confidence-building measures, specifically regarding Iran’s nuclear program, according to Jordan’s Petra news agency.

There was no immediate confirmation from Tehran or Riyadh.

Meanwhile, in a video interview published on December 13, Saudi Arabia’s UN envoy Abdallah al-Mouallimi told a Saudi newspaper that no major results had been achieved in the negotiation process.

“We would like to push these discussions toward substantive issues that involve the behavior of the Iranian government in the region,” Mouallimi told Arab News.

“But as long as the Iranians continue to play games with these talks, they are not going to go anywhere,” he said. “The Iranians take a long-term attitude toward these talks. We are not interested in talks for the sake of talks.”

The Houthi obstacle

As talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran intensified this year, Houthi attacks on the former kingdom did not decrease, but rather increased significantly.

The number of attacks by the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen on Saudi Arabia, predominantly targeting civilian locations, doubled during the first nine months of 2021 compared with the same period a year earlier, according to research by a US think tank.

The report, by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, also called on the US to provide Saudi Arabia with additional aid to defend itself against the attacks, and to highlight the key role Iran plays in facilitating them.

“Iran and Ansar Allah (Partisans of God), better known as the Houthi movement, have conducted a campaign of high-profile attacks against civilian Saudi Arabian and coalition targets in the Gulf,” according to the CSIS report, which was released on Tuesday.

“The Houthis are orchestrating an increasingly intense irregular warfare campaign against Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Gulf using sophisticated cruise and ballistic missiles, UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones), and other stand-off weapons.”

CSIS studied a total of 4,103 attacks from within Yemen on Saudi locations, and against maritime and other targets, between Jan. 1, 2016, and Oct. 20, 2021. It found that “the number of Houthi attacks per month doubled against Saudi Arabia and other targets over the first nine months of 2021 compared to the same period in 2020.”

It also found that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which answers directly to the country’s supreme leader, “has provided the Houthis with training and a growing arsenal of sophisticated weapons and technology for anti-tank guided missiles, sea mines, explosive-laden UAVs, ballistic and cruise missiles, unmanned maritime vehicles, and other weapons and systems.”

The report noted that the Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of the IRGC, worked alongside Lebanese Hezbollah to improve Houthi capabilities “at a relatively low cost,” especially, it adds, when compared with the cost to Saudi Arabia of improving the air defenses required to negate the threat posed by missile and drone attacks.

Iran’s involvement in the attacks throughout the year does not present a transparent image for negotiations, and Saudi Arabia has understandably remained in distrust towards the Islamic republic.

At least seven members of the Houthi militia were killed in an airstrike launched by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition in Yemen’s southwestern province of Taiz, a local military source said.”Warplanes of the Saudi Arabia-led coalition bombed a convoy of the Houthi rebel militia when the convoy was travelling in the western parts of Taiz,” the source told Xinhua news agency.The airstrike destroyed two vehicles belonging to the rebel group and killed seven of its members in Taiz’s district of Maqbanah, he said.The Saudi-led coalition has made no comment yet, while it has recently intensified airstrikes on various Houthi-held sites across the war-ravaged Arab country.Yemen has been mired in a civil war since late 2014 when the Houthi militia seized control of several northern provinces and forced the internationally-recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi out of the capital Sanaa.The Saudi-led Arab coalition intervened in the Yemeni conflict in March 2015 to support Hadi’s government.

It is therefore clear that Saudi Arabia, although claiming to have withdrawn its forces from Yemen, does not cease to launch strikes on Houthi positions. This continued back and forth is a major source of distrust between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and if a mechanism is not established to mitigate the rate of these attacks talks between the two powers will not get past a certain point.