As the United States-Israeli war on Iran approaches its fourth week after unleashing chaos across the Middle East, foreign ministers from Arab and Muslim countries have convened for urgent discussions in Saudi Arabia.Talks were held on Wednesday as Iran was targeting several energy facilities across Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in retaliation against Israel’s strike on the South Pars gasfield, Iran’s biggest source of energy. That attack came during a week marked by Israeli assassinations of top Iranian security official Ali Larijani, Basij paramilitary commander Gholamreza Soleimani and intelligence chief Esmail Khatib.The meeting of top diplomats in Riyadh was aimed at mustering a common response to Iran’s increasing retaliation against US assets and infrastructure in the region, which not only threatens regional stability but is also causing disruptions to the global economy.So what happened in Riyadh? How might these countries deal with Iran? And is Iran likely to listen?Who was at the Riyadh meeting?A joint statement issued on Thursday confirmed that foreign ministers from Qatar, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkiye and the United Arab Emirates attended the meeting on Wednesday.All these countries have been impacted by the war, whether in terms of direct attacks from Iran, secondary threats from falling debris, dwindling energy supplies or looming m …
