“The reopening of the Iranian embassy will take place on Tuesday at 6:00 pm local time (15:00 GMT) in the presence of the designated Iranian ambassador to Saudi Arabia,” a diplomatic source in Riyadh, who preferred to remain anonymous, told AFP.
Iran will reopen its embassy in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, according to a diplomatic source in Riyadh, nearly three months after the surprise announcement of an agreement between the two most important regional powers in the Gulf to resume diplomatic relations after a seven-year rupture.
Tehran and Riyadh severed their relations in 2016 after demonstrators in the Islamic Republic attacked Saudi diplomatic missions, against the backdrop of the execution of the Saudi Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.
Last month, the state-run English-language newspaper Iran Daily reported that Tehran had “appointed high-ranking diplomat Alireza Enayati as the new ambassador to Saudi Arabia.” However, this appointment was not officially announced by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Enayati currently holds the position of Deputy Foreign Minister after he was ambassador to Kuwait during the era of moderate President Hassan Rouhani. The former Iranian embassy building, which was closed for years, will reopen after it was recently fully restored.
Since the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, Iran and Saudi Arabia have been on opposite sides of most regional issues. On the tenth of last March, Iran and Saudi Arabia reached an agreement under the auspices of China to reopen their embassies and implement economic and security cooperation agreements signed more than twenty years ago.
President Ibrahim Raisi received an invitation to visit Saudi Arabia, according to Tehran, while Iran announced that it had invited Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz to visit Iran.
