The Saudi and Iranian foreign ministers agree to hold a bilateral meeting in less than a week

Posted in: 03/27/2023 – 09:22

The Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, and the Iranian, Hussein Amir Abdullahian, held phone talks, the second between them in less than a week. And “during the call, a number of common issues were discussed in light of the agreement,” which was signed in China, according to the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA).

Likewise, the two ministers agreed to “hold a bilateral meeting between them during the current month of Ramadan,” according to the agency, which did not specify a time or place for the meeting.

Iran and Saudi Arabia announced that within two months they would resume their diplomatic relations, which were severed since 2016, following negotiations hosted by China.

Relations were severed when Iranian protesters attacked Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran, after the kingdom executed an opposition Shiite cleric named Nimr al-Nimr.

The rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia is supposed to allow them to reopen their embassies within two months and implement economic and security cooperation agreements signed more than twenty years ago.

On March 19, an Iranian official reported that President Ebrahim Raisi had accepted an invitation from King Salman to visit Saudi Arabia, information that Riyadh has not confirmed.

On the same day, Abdollahian told the press that the two countries had agreed to hold a meeting between their senior diplomats, and that three locations had been proposed for this purpose, but he did not specify any of them.

Saudi officials had announced that the upcoming meeting between the two ministers is the next step in the sudden rapprochement between the two countries.

Iran and Saudi Arabia are the two most prominent regional powers in the Gulf, and they are on opposite sides of most regional files. The step of rapprochement between them may involve major diplomatic regional changes.