Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s expected attendance at the OIC summit on Sunday will bring an unusual level of attention to the 57-member bloc of Muslim-majority countries.
It will be Raisi’s first trip to Saudi Arabia since a surprise, China-brokered rapprochement deal announced in March ended seven years of severed bilateral ties.
Iran is a backer not just of Hamas but of Hezbollah and Yemen’s Huthi rebels, who have been at war with a Saudi-led coalition since 2015.
However, the Middle East heavyweights agree on publicly supporting Palestinians, a point stressed in official communications on the first call between Raisi and Prince Mohammed on October 12, five days after the war erupted.
Because the OIC’s membership extends from Africa to Asia, any statement coming out of Sunday’s summit could also underscore how support for Palestinians is growing well beyond the Middle East, said Saudi analyst Aziz Alghashian.
“Non-Western countries are not accepting this any longer and not buying the American narrative, the Western narrative” of the conflict, he said.