BEIRUT: Saudi Arabia and Iran will reopen embassies in each other’s capitals “within days,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Friday, indicating a warming of relations after seven years.
Amirabdollahian gave no dates for the reopening of the embassies, which closed in 2016, at a Beirut news conference.
“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 an official Arabic translation.
China brokered a diplomatic rapprochement between the regional rivals last month.
Afterward, the Iran-aligned Houthi movement overthrew the Saudi-backed government and took control of Sanaa in 2015, their relationship deteriorated.
Tension between the countries has fueled regional conflicts like the Syrian civil war.
After meeting with Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon, Amirabdollahian spoke.
The Iranian foreign minister said President Ebrahim Raisi would visit Syria in “the near future” without details.
An Iranian president would visit Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the first time since the 2011 Syrian civil war. Assad regained control of most of Syria with military and economic support from Iran and Russia.
Tzachi Hanegbi, Israel’s National Security Adviser, portrayed Iran’s diplomatic outreach as a response to Israeli military strikes on its assets in Syria and elsewhere.
“Iran is in distress,” he told Israel’s Channel 12.
