After a break of seven years, regional foes Iran and Saudi Arabia have decided to resume diplomatic relations.
On Monday, a top Iranian diplomat stated that Saudi Arabia and Iran would reopen their embassies to one other by the 9th of May.
According to the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s head for Persian Gulf relations, Alireza Enayati, who spoke with the Iranian government’s news agency, IRNA, Riyadh, and Tehran are planning to reopen their respective embassies.
After arduous talks spanning the course of two years, the two nations finally reached an agreement the month before to rekindle their diplomatic ties. Beijing, the capital of China, was the location of the breakthrough.
At the beginning of this month, the highest-ranking diplomats from both countries gathered in Beijing to talk about the restarting of flights connecting the two nations, the resumption of operations of embassies on both sides and the reinstating of ambassadors who had been removed from their posts.
According to Enayati, a technical group from Saudi Arabia traveled to Iran the week before last and examined their embassy of the country in Tehran.
After that, they traveled to Mashhad to look at the Saudi consulate here. Their trip to Saudi Arabia followed that of two Iranian delegations that had previously traveled there.
After an irate mob assaulted in Tehran the Saudi Embassy and in Mashhad the Saudi Consulate in January 2016, in response to the killing of a famous Saudi Shia cleric named Sheikh Nimr Al-Nimr, both of these diplomatic missions were forced to close their doors.
According to the information provided by the Iranian diplomat, the reopening of diplomatic missions will continue with the arrival of another Saudi team that is planned to take place in the coming days in Tehran.
According to him, a pleasant and fruitful discussion took place between the Iranian group that recently toured Riyadh and the Saudi assistant foreign minister. He described the meeting as positive and constructive.
Enayati stated that the two nations are working towards opening their consulates and embassies prior to the beginning of the Hajj pilgrimage in order to assist in making the practical arrangements necessary for Iranian pilgrims.
He also briefed about a further meeting that would take place between Amir-Abdollahian Hossein Foreign Minister and Prince Faisal bin Farhan his Saudi colleague in the future days. He stated that the meeting is scheduled to take place before the diplomatic posts are reopened.
The ambassador stated that the aviation authorities of the two nations are scheduled to meet and have negotiations to reactivate their mutual air transport agreement in relation to the restart of flights between Saudi and Iranian cities.
Nasser Kanaani, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, announced on Monday during his weekly news conference that President Ebrahim Raisi has issued a letter of request to Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz for a trip to Tehran. Kanaani made the announcement.
The offer is a follow-up to an earlier invitation extended by the monarch to the president of Iran for a trip to Riyadh, which request the Iranian president has already accepted.
He stated that the attempts to restart diplomatic efforts in the two nations were well underway and that the process of executing the agreements that were agreed upon between both foreign ministers was making good progress.
