Saudi, Iran foreign ministers to meet during Ramadan
The scheduled meeting comes after Saudi Arabia and Iran signed a groundbreaking deal to restore ties after seven years of estrangement.
Iran and Saudi Arabia’s top diplomats have agreed to meet before the end of the holy month of Ramadan to broker a landmark bilateral reconciliation deal brokered by China.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan and his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made the decision after making their second phone call in less than a week, the official Saudi news agency (SPA) reported on Monday.
“During the conversation, a number of common issues were discussed in light of the tripartite agreement signed in the People’s Republic of China,” the SPA said.
“The two ministers also agreed to hold a bilateral meeting between them during the current month of Ramadan,” SPA said.
The report did not specify the exact date or location of the meeting.
Ramadan started last week and ends in the third week of April.
Saudi officials have said the meeting is the next step in restoring ties seven years after they were broken.
Riyadh broke off relations after Iranian protesters attacked Saudi diplomatic missions in 2016 following the Saudi execution of Shiite Muslim leader Nimr al-Nimr — just one in a series of flashpoints between the two long-standing regional rivals.
The deal is expected to see Shiite Iran and mostly Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia reopen their embassies and missions within two months and implement security and economic cooperation agreements signed more than 20 years ago.
An Iranian official said on March 19 that Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi had been welcomed by King Salman for a visit to Saudi Arabia, although Riyadh has yet to confirm this.
Amir-Abdollahian told reporters the same day that the two countries had agreed to hold a meeting between their top diplomats and that three locations had been suggested without specifying which.
The tension between Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest exporter of crude oil, and Iran, which has been deeply at odds with Western governments over its nuclear activities, has the potential to strain relations in a region that has been marked by decades of turbulence, reshape.