Syria, Iran top agenda as Kerry meets wary Arabs in Saudi

Kerry began a stop in Riyadh by meeting with representatives of the six nations of the GCC, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

The violence against Riyadh’s missions occurred after Saudi Arabia executed dissident Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr, a driving force behind anti-government protests in the kingdom.

From Davos, Kerry travels to Riyadh, where he will urge Saudi and Gulf leaders to resolve their differences with Iran in the hopes of working together on Syria and the fight against ISIS.

He added that Kerry had emphasized to the Iranian and Saudi foreign ministers the importance of reconciliation and that Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who visited Riyadh this week, also discussed this with Saudi authorities.

His comments came in response to a complaint lodged a day earlier by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who told The Associated Press in an interview that new US sanctions over Iran’s ballistic missile testing are “illegal” and an example of an American “addiction to coercion”.

But differences between the two sides about which Syrian groups should represent the opposition at the bargaining table have threatened to delay the start of U.N.-led talks set to begin Monday in Geneva.

In other words, to buy a bad deal on Iran’s nuclear program – they’re already building four new nuclear facilities – we had to let them have tens of billions of dollars for terrorism because, as the Geico commercial says, “that’s what they do”.

He was also due to hold talks with Saudi King Salman, the deputy crown prince and the chief negotiator for the Saudi-backed Syrian opposition, Riyad Hijab.

Kerry stressed that “negotiations [over Iran’s nuclear program] aimed to achieve a primary goal, which is to make the [Middle East] region free of… nuclear weapons”.

The UN said last month the number of people forcibly displaced worldwide was likely to have “far surpassed” a record 60 million a year ago, mainly driven by the Syrian war and other protracted conflicts. Saudi Arabia and some other Arab states then severed diplomatic relations with Iran and have launched campaigns accusing it of being behind numerous terrorist attacks around the world.

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf neighbors perceive a lack of USA engagement in the region, particularly in the face of what they see as Iran’s “interference” in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere.

Before leaving Switzerland, Kerry said the rivalry remained a concern.

But the State Department official said “one of the things that we think is relatively positive” is that neither Iran nor Saudi wants the bilateral problems to affect issues such as Syrian peace negotiations.