Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian asked Saudi Arabia on Thursday, August 27, 2011 to release a citizen who was arrested while performing Hajj in this country.
The semi-official Fars news agency reported that “the Iranian minister presented his request in a telephone conversation with his Omani counterpart.”
Hajj is one of the few areas of cooperation between regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia, which severed ties in 2016.
Fars news agency quoted Mojtaba Zulnoor, a member of the parliament’s national security and foreign policy commission, as saying: “If the Saudis do not show goodwill and release the detained Hajj, it is natural that Iran will take countermeasures.”
Iranian media had reported that “this man was arrested for carrying the picture of Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, who was killed in a US drone strike in January 2020.”
Fars did not provide details of the reason for the negotiations with the Omani minister, but the sultanate has long been a mediator between Tehran and its opposition.
Iran and Saudi Arabia, which are involved in proxy conflicts across the region, have so far held five rounds of talks in Iraq to normalize relations.
Negotiations between Riyadh and Tehran were halted in November 2021 after the election of Ebrahim Raisi as the new president of Iran, after four rounds of negotiations hosted by Baghdad, the capital of Iraq.
This Iranian security official said in an interview with “Arabi Post” in return to the possible fifth round of talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, that the President’s government is determined to improve relations with the Saudis and is doing so. Everything is possible to achieve this goal, so the fifth round is expected to be very positive.”
In this context, this Iranian government official, who is close to Iran’s conservative president Ebrahim Raisi, told Arab Post: “President Ebrahim Raisi is very interested in reviving the relations between Tehran and Riyadh and improving the relations of the Islamic Republic with this country. Arab neighbors in general, we don’t count on the West, we still have the East and our Arab neighbors and they are a priority for Tehran.
Since his election in June 2021, Iran’s president and conservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi has adopted a grand strategy to improve Iran’s relations with the Persian Gulf countries. According to Iranian sources who spoke to “Arabi Post” in a previous report, “Raisi is determined to expand Iran’s relations, especially with Saudi Arabia, so he insists on restoring diplomatic relations between the two countries as soon as possible.”
According to this background, a government official close to the president of Iran says: “Last year, Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia contacted Mr. Ebrahim Raisi to invest in Saudi-Iranian relations and asked the Iranian president for the need to improve relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
According to the same source, “this communication between Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, and Ibrahim Raisi, the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, took place through an Iraqi mediator, but the source did not reveal the identity of the Iraqi mediator and its detailed information.” Replay of this communication between Mohammad Bin Salman and Ebrahim Raisi.
Apparently, the Islamic Republic of Iran during the Ebrahim Raisi period, regardless of the revival of the Iran nuclear agreement in 2015, has a great desire to communicate with its Arab neighbors, especially Saudi Arabia. Diplomatic relations between Tehran and Riyadh were severed in January 2016 after that. A number of Iranians, Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic establishment in Tehran, the capital of Iran, protesting the execution of Saudi Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr by Saudi authorities.
Source: Lebanon Debate
