Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah’s call for an emergency Extraordinary Islamic Solidarity Summit on Tuesday and Wednesday is a clear indication of the hard times the Middle East is currently passing through.
Iraqi political analyst Waleed Al-Zubaidi, currently settled in Jordan, stressed the lead role Saudi Arabia has to play in settling the region’s issues.
“Saudi Arabia has a huge role to play in the region. Its role no longer confined to the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, but has to take leadership in the Arab and Islamic worlds where the Islamic security under threat and their internal problems are becoming more difficult,” he said in a statement quoted by the Al-Watan daily on Sunday.
He stressed the significance of the summit making a review of people’s conditions in the Arab and Muslim states while striving find solutions to major issues.
He also stressed the need to counter Iranian mobilizations in the Arab region including Iraq.
“The intensity of the Iranian threat is growing.
So the Islamic conference should come up with an Arab Islamic plan to deal with the Iranian threat,” he said.
Al-Zuabidy added that the conference’s plan should have two stages. The first part of the plan should focus on persuading Iran through diplomatic and media channels to abandon its sectarian approach in the region.
He said Iran should understand the futility of encouraging sectarian sentiments and learn from its experience in the region. Its major alliances in Syria and Lebanon are heading for a collapse, he added.
He said in the event of Iranian decision makers rejecting this idea, Arab and Islamic countries should resort to strong moves such as imposing an economic, political and media boycott on Iran. This is particularly important because Iran is making its clutch on Iraq, where it gained a strong footstep thanks to the American occupation, stronger to compensate its heavy losses in Syria.
“It is important that the Islamic summit should discuss in which direction Iraq is moving because it is crucial for the success of the Arab and Islamic efforts to solve the issues in the region,” he said.
According to Asaad Al-Ebadi, a researcher in international relations, the summit will supply a clear idea on a framework for effective and joint move to resolve their common issues.
He said the “The summit is in need of coming up with plans similar to the Marshal Plan that was devised to reconstruct Europe after the end of the World War II. It is because economy is a major factor in solving the issues in the Arab and Muslim countries,” he said.
King Abdullah, being the most influential leader in the Arab and Muslim world, should reset the geopolitical compass as a base to boost the Arab and Islamic forces in regional and international levels and to build alliances in a new from, he said.
He added that these alliances should be matching with the size of the role played by the influential Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
