Iran's president Ebrahim Raisi and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman hold their first EVER phone call as Hamas attack upends Middle East rivalry

• e-mail

It is less than a month since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told President Joe Biden that the Middle East was on the brink of a massive realignment, and a historic peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

But on Wednesday evening in the aftermath of the devastating Hamas terrorist attack, the Middle East looked like it could be on the brink of a very different kind of realignment.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi telephoned Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in what officials said was an effort to forge a joint position of support for the Palestinian cause.

'This is what Hamas wanted,' said a senior European diplomat with knowledge of the region, who was not authorized to speak to the media.

'The Saudis and other Arab nations have been forging ahead with normalisation [of relations with Israel] as if the Palestinian cause didn't matter any more.'

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi telephoned Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Wednesday, the first time the two leaders had ever spoken

An Iranian aide said they agreed the need to end 'war crimes against Palestine.' Palestinians are seen here evacuating wounded from Rafah refugee camp in Gaza on Thursday

It reflects an extraordinary development between leaders on either side of the historic divide between Sunni and Shia Islam, a schism that fuels conflicts throughout the Middle East 

The phone call was the first between the two key figures since Tehran and Riyadh restored ties seven months ago. 

They discussed 'the need to end war crimes against Palestine,' Iranian presidential political affairs aide Mohammad Jamshidi said on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. 

'Islamic unity was stressed and both believed the regime's crimes and the US green light will cause destructive insecurity for the regime and backers,' he said.

Simon Henderson, Saudi expert at the Washington Institute, said: 'It's extraordinarily interesting and extraordinarily dangerous at the same time.'

He said it might reflect efforts by Washington to use any diplomatic channels possible to urge Iran not to escalate the conflict.

'The US I think, is worried about the war, or the fighting, expanding,' he said. 

'And they want to keep Hezbollah [an Iranian proxy] out of the fray. And the way to do that is to keep Iran out of the fray.'

The bodies of Palestinians killed during Israeli air strikes in response to the Hamas attacks

Smoke rises from the Gaza Strip after another round of Israeli airstrikes

Less than a month ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Joe Biden a agreed the region was on the brink 'of a historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia'

A U.S. official told the Wall Street Journal: 'With the detente of Saudi Arabia and Iran formalized in March, I assume the crown prince thought this was an apt moment. 

'We’re asking all our partners to work with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.'

At least 1,200 Israelis were killed when thousands of Hamas fighters, who are backed by Iran, poured out of the Gaza Strip on Saturday. 

Gaza authorities said Thursday that more than 1,400 Palestinians had been killed and more than 6,000 wounded in retaliatory airstrikes. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Israeli troops are gathering around the 140 square-mile territory in advance of an expected ground invasion.

Any sort of Iranian-Saudi rapprochement could undermine years of steady U.S. diplomacy in the region.

Worries about Iran's nuclear weapons program, and its support for terrorist groups, were shared by Israel and Saudi Arabia. 

And under President Donald Trump a normalization push was launched, a country-by-country initiative to build ties between Arab states and Israel. 

Israel is preparing for a ground invasion of Gaza to root out Hamas terrorists

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reviews a group of armed forces cadets during their graduation ceremony accompanied by commanders of the armed force

Known as the Abraham Accords, the push secured agreements in 2020 between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco, states that had not recognized Israel since its 1948 founding on Palestinian soil. 

Biden continued the push, with a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia as the big prize.

Last year he welcomed the Saudi decision to open its airspace to all civilian planes, including those en route to and from Israel, by flying from Tel Aviv to Jeddah.

In New York last month Netanyahu and Biden underlined the historic nature of the moment.

Biden said: 'If you and I 10 years ago were talking about normalization with Saudi Arabia, I think we'd look at each other like, "who's been drinking what?"'

But it left Palestinians feeling vulnerable, as if their decades long conflict with Israel had been written out of history. One-by-one their allies were being picked off without their claims to sovereignty being discussed or a two-state solution, giving them their own nation, moving closer.

Soon after the attacks, Saudi Arabia issued a statement that did not condemn Hamas and pointed out it had repeatedly warned that Israel's 'occupation, the deprivation of the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights, and the repetition of systematic provocations' led to this moment.

'We’re going to see a rather significant operation from air, land and sea that costs many, many, many lives,' Steven Cook, a senior fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the Associated Press. 

'I think this dynamic of normalization will likely slow down or come to a halt, at least for a period of time.'