ALBAWABA - According to the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has departed Tehran for Riyadh, leading a high-level delegation at the request of his Saudi counterpart, Prince Faisal bin Farhan.
“The visit is taking place at the invitation of Faisal bin Farhan, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, in response to his visit to Tehran and with the aim of facilitating and speeding up the implementation process of the agreement between the two countries last March in Beijing,” Tasnim News Agency reported.
On his first visit to Iran since the restart of diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran in March, Prince Faisal met with Iranian officials in Tehran in June. In March, Iran and Saudi Arabia reached an agreement through China to end a diplomatic schism and rebuild relations after years of antagonism that had threatened regional stability in the Gulf, as well as Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon.
Saudi Arabia and Iran severed ties in 2016 when Iranian protesters attacked the Saudi diplomatic mission in Tehran in retaliation to the kingdom’s execution of prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.
The official government news agency IRNA reported that Iran’s first ambassador in more than seven years will be accompanying Minister Abdollahian. Earlier this week Amir-Abdollahian announced that the Saudi ambassador will soon arrive in Tehran and the two embassies are already staffed.
Both countries have had rocky relations since 1979, when Shiite revolutionaries came to power in Iran and pledged to export their revolution to the world, including Gulf countries. A Chinese-brokered deal in March saw both countries reconcile and restore diplomatic relations around seven years after ties were cut.
