A photograph of King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia’s ruler, walking through a palace in Mecca flanked by two other notables was no doubt exactly the type of image the kingdom’s leaders hoped to portray. Clearly, too, it was one intended for both internal and external consumption.

To the king’s right was a beaming Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al al-Sheik, Saudi Arabia’s top Sunni religious leader, while to his left was Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president of Shia Iran. Together the trio represented the Middle East’s powerhouses – two nations with a history of fraught relations but that lay claim to leadership roles for the Sunni and Shia communities respectively.