This will probably trigger a flurry of rabid response by anti-Israeli Iranians...

The fact that a trip by a head of state is kept secret from the general population speaks volume about the nature of that relationship. Or as they say in the Middle East, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend, well for the time-being!"

Strange, yet not unexpected turn of events. The IR has been screaming for 40 years that it will destroy both Israel and the Saudi government. So, it will make sense for those two entities to united against the IR.

Honestly, dear Mehrdad, I really don't think that the Iranians you talk about are anti-Israelis. They're anti-Semites. True that Iran and Israel are now enemies, but that's only because of 40 years of the IR promising to wipe Israel off the map, and supporting military campaigns against it, including positioning tens of thousands of missiles at its border through the Lebanese Hezbollah. And those things only came about because of the anti-Semitism of the Shia clergy and the leftists who brought them to power. And now they're coming up with these wild conspiracy theories that Israel wanted the Shah gone so that it can take over the entire Middle East! Can you imagine?!! A country of ten million people walking over and taking over territory a million times its size that is occupied by hundreds of millions of people who hate it! Israel would have nothing to do with us if it wasn't for the IR and past 40 years of its warmongering.

The Israeli / Palestinian conflict is a land dispute between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Let them duke it out. What's it to us? And before they say because they're Muslims, the IR was cheering on the Russians when they were mowing down Muslim Cheches by tens of thousands. And Chechnya is much closer to Iran than Israel / Palestine. And Russians have actually stolen territory from Iran in the past. This is not saying that everyone who opposes Israeli occuptaion (such as myself) is an anti-Semite. But most Iranians who are obsessed with the issue are.

AO

Anti-Israel is a euphemism for anti-semite, and in the Iranian case, anti-Jews, which has plagued Iran.  And most of it comes from Iranian diaspora that never lived in Iran, and most of that comes from educated Iranians, who have lived in America since prior to 1979. 

A sense of jealousy as well as the Jerusalem syndrome have triggered a nagging bug in them that bothers them worse than Khamenei's hemorrhoid.

I also think it's a symbol of Iranian backwardness, the same backwardness that lead to seeing Khomeini's image in the moon, and which has been only augmented since the 1979 Devolution and the resulting 40 years of 24/7 brainwashing by IR's well funded propaganda machine. And the backwardness applies to those in the diaspora as well. Ironically, when it comes to their anti-Semitism, they are very similar to the neo-Nazis who think of them as sub-human Middle Eastern monkeys! See, when you have the anti-Semitic predisposition, then you'll look for the Jew treachery wherever you are. You can be in the West, and still immerse yourself in anti-Semitic material, just like Neo-Nazis do. So, Iranians are still stuck in the anti-Semitic doctrines of 1800s and 1900s. There was once one of these multi-username accounts on the old site that urged everyone to read the debunked Elders of Zion book, and advertised it as "one of the most important books" one should read! I mean seriously.... 

This "prince" is smart and has realized that nothing can be gained by hostilites. Trouble is that most of the 20 million plus Saudis do not think the way he does. 

Dear CoP,

You summarized the main point of this article which is the Saudis are anti-Semitic like most of the Middle East, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. That's why none of their rulers want to be seen in public embracing an Israeli politician. But somehow the comments here drifted towards the Iranian anti-Semitic tendencies which is also a valid point.

But not the point of this article.

I think we talked about Iranian anti-Semitism becasue that's the real reason why IR has been at war with Israel for the past 40 years, and also the fact that most Iranian have bought into the argument. The saudis being anti-Semites is also a fact. And the article was really about Saudi and Isareli alliance against Iran so talking about the roots of the problem is related to the article. 

AO,

The roots of the problem actually go back to the relationship between the Prophet Muhammad and the Jewish tribes of Medina. But that’s ancient history.

The large scale Iranian anti-Semitisms is more of a recent thing. It has both leftist and Islamic roots in the Shah-era revolutionaries and college students, all home-grown. As you may know, the Marxist-Islamist MEK and the garden-variety Marxist-Leninists of the 70’s Iran were all trained by Arafat, PLO, Ghaddafi in southern Lebanon and Libya, and then they brought their handy work to Iran and assassinated Americans and Iranian officials, and ultimately started a military/terrorist uprising against the Shah. For them, Israel was always an extension of the US and a friend of the late Shah and that's the real reason that they have been at war with Israel for the past 40 years.

I agree. I would add that Iranians are always a few decades behind on everything too. The whole 1979 Devolution started with the leftist liebration movements that was happening around the world in the 60 and and early 70s. I most countries it was a fad that went away. Iranians though--forever being kasseyeh daghtar az ash, yet at the same time late to the game (as usual)--became obsessed with it and set their whole country on fire. And now, they're unwilling to let go of 1800 and 1900 anti-Semitic ideology.

On the Mohammed thing, didn't he also have a Jewish wife?

Historical events of the pre-1979 rev, mostly engrained deeply in left/Shiism, have less or nothing to do with boys, who came to the US at young age. Even in daily conversation, you wouldn't miss "joohooda" in their lingo. 

A hypothetical scenario would demonstrate how some Iranian Americans would respond to a possible Iran/Israel handshake vs. the Saudi nationals everywhere.