Saudi FM headed to Iran ahead of embassy reopening

ByNews Desk- The Cradle 

The Saudi official's visit will come as the US scrambles to secure both a new nuclear deal with Iran and a Saudi-Israel normalization agreement

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan is set to visit Iran on 17 June for high-level talks with officials, according to the state-run Tasnim News Agency.

Sources in Iran earlier said that the Saudi embassy in Tehran would officially reopen during Bin Farhan’s visit.

Iran reopened its embassy in Saudi Arabia on 7 June. This came a few days after the kingdom’s top diplomat met with his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in South Africa on the sidelines of a ministerial meeting of the BRICS group of emerging economies.

Both Iran and Saudi Arabia have formally applied to join BRICS. The Gulf kingdom has also applied to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), another multilateral group led by Russia and China that Iran recently joined.

On 10 March, the historic rivals signed a surprise reconciliation agreement brokered by China, ending years of discord and agreeing to reopen all diplomatic missions.

Both sides held several rounds of dialogue in Iraq and Oman before signing the agreement in Beijing, which reportedly left the US “blindsided.”

Riyadh and Tehran cut formal ties after Iranian protesters attacked Saudi diplomatic missions in 2016 following the kingdom’s execution of Shia Muslim leader Nimr al-Nimr – one in a series of flashpoints between the two regional superpowers.

The relationship began souring a year earlier, after Saudi Arabia and the UAE, with the support of NATO, launched a brutal war on Yemen to remove the Ansarallah resistance movement from power.

Bin Farhan’s visit to Tehran will take place as the US scrambles to reposition itself in West Asia by pushing for both a renewed nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic and a Saudi-Israel normalization deal.

Since the chaotic end of the US occupation of Afghanistan in 2021 and the start of the Russia-Ukraine war months later, Saudi Arabia has shifted its interest eastward in what has become a very public divorce from the US.

Before moving to restore ties with Iran and Syria, the kingdom was already causing frustration in Washington by giving Biden the cold shoulder on several occasions, refusing to uphold western sanctions on Russia, and pushing OPEC+ to cut oil production levels at a time of crisis for the west.