TEHRAN – The meeting between the president of the United States of America and Saudi Arabia’s crown prince on the sidelines of the G20 summit demonstrated Riyadh and Washington’s failure to provoke hostility toward Iran.

During the summit in Osaka, Japan, Mohammad bin Salman expended a lot of effort into lobbying with East Asian countries, such as Indonesia and South Korea, against Iran. He even tried to demonstrate Iran as a real and dangerous threat but eventually failed to achieve his goals.

The Saudi crown prince’s failure to achieve his anti-Iran goals comes while bin Salman counted greatly on the support of the other members of the G20 for Washington and Riyadh against Tehran.

As has been reported by informed sources, issues such as the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, which was raised in bin Salman’s meetings with heads of the G20 and others, human rights criticisms levelled at the House of Saud due to the killings of Yemeni children, domestic suppression and execution of dissidents left no place for the Saudis’ maneuvering in the G20 summit.

On the first day of the G20 summit, bin Salman and Trump launched a joint effort to coax other members of the G20 into taking a confrontational stance against Iran.

One of the issues which the Saudi crown prince and the U.S. president especially focused on was to lay the blame for the tensions in the Persian Gulf – especially regarding the attacks on two oil tankers in the Sea of Oman – on the Islamic Republic of Iran.

However, this claim has not been accepted by most members of the G20 and this issue eventually induced bin Salman and Trump to leave Japan’s Osaka empty-handed.

During the summit, almost none of the members passed a positive signal to the Saudi crown prince and the U.S. president with regard to Riyadh’s regional and anti-Iran policies.

According to media sources, European countries, in their inner circles, have also complained about and blamed Trump, Bolton, Pompeo and their allies for the current crisis in West Asia.

Accordingly, the European countries and other international actors have railed against the Trump administration for pulling out of the Iran nuclear agreement and its inability to manage the current critical conditions. Such complaint and criticism is also leveled at Saudi Arabia, as the main ally and pawn of the United States in West Asia.

MH/PA