Saudi Arabia and Iran are set to open embassies in each other’s capitals “within days”, Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Friday (April 28) as the restoration of ties due to a China-brokered peace starts taking up an independent bilateral shape between Tehran and Riyadh.
The Iranian foreign minister was speaking at a news conference in the Lebanese capital Beirut.
Amirabdollahian, however, did not give specific dates for the reopening of the embassies.
The two countries agreed to restore relations on March 10 and said they would reopen embassies in each other’s capitals within “two months”. It appears that the establishment of a Saudi embassy in Tehran and an Iranian embassy in Riyadh may happen well before that self-imposed two month deadline.
The Iranian and Saudi embassies in the respective countries have been closed since January 2016 when Riyadh executed a prominent Saudi Shia cleric Ayatollah Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, commonly referred to as Sheikh Nimr.
The closure of embassies was simply the culmination of Tehran-Riyadh bilateral turmoil that was ongoing for decades and plunged to a low in 2015 following the intervention of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in the Yemen war. Despite this intervention, the Iran-aligned Houthi movement toppled the Saudi-backed government and seized control of the capital Sana’a.
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Saudi Arabia accused Iran of providing weapons to the Houthis who attacked Saudi cities with armed drones and ballistic missiles.
In 2019, Riyadh accused Tehran of being responsible for an attack targeting Aramco oil facilities, which resulted in stopping half of its oil production.
Iran denied those accusations.
Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed last month to end their diplomatic row and restore diplomatic missions under a deal brokered by China.
“During the last phone call between the foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia on Eid al-Fitr, we agreed to work in the next coming days on the reopening of the Iranian and Saudi embassies in Tehran and Riyadh,” Amirabdollahian said, according to the official Arabic translation reported by Reuters.
Amirabdollahian was speaking at the end of his visit to Lebanon in which he met with Lebanese officials including Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
When asked about a visit by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi to Damascus, Amirabdollahian confirmed it, saying there was a “programme” put in place for “the near future” without indicating a specific timeframe.
The visit will be the first by an Iranian president to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since war broke out in Syria in 2011.
(With inputs from agencies)
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