West News Wire: Seven years after their connections were severed over a number of concerns, Iran and Saudi Arabia finally have come to an agreement in the Chinese capital of Beijing to resume diplomatic relations and reopen embassies and posts.
Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), and his Saudi counterpart met in Beijing for several days of intense negotiations before coming to a deal on Friday. Iran, Saudi Arabia, and China released a joint statement to make the official announcement.
Shakhani, the national security advisor for Saudi Arabia, Musaid Al Aiban, and Wang Yi, the head of the Chinese Communist Party’s Office of the Central Foreign Affairs Committee, signed the statement.
On Monday, Shamkhani and his Saudi colleague have been in-depth discussions in Beijing in an effort to resolve the problems between Iran and Riyadh. The talks came after a meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Iranian President Ebrahim Raeisi in Beijing last month.
Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia “decided to resume diplomatic ties and re-open embassies and missions within two months” as a consequence of the negotiations, according to the joint statement.
The foreign ministries of Iran and Saudi Arabia will meet to “implement this agreement and make the necessary arrangements for the exchange of ambassadors,” the statement continued.
In the declaration, Iran and Saudi Arabia stressed the importance of respecting one another’s national sovereignty and refraining from meddling in one another’s internal affairs. They also agreed to put into effect a May 1998 agreement to increase economic, commercial, investment, technological, scientific, cultural, sporting, and youth affairs cooperation as well as a security cooperation pact inked in April 2001.
It stressed that Iran, Saudi Arabia, and China expressed their unwavering intention to exert their greatest efforts to advance regional and global peace and security.
The statement went on to say that delegations from Iran and Saudi Arabia, led by Shamkhani and Aiban, had several meetings over the previous five days as a result of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s efforts to arrange meetings between senior Iranian and Saudi officials and his support for the development of relations between Tehran and Riyadh based on the idea of good neighborliness.
The talks between Shamkhani and Aiban were also held as a result of Tehran and Riyadh’s desire to settle differences through dialogue and diplomacy based on kinship and both sides’ adherence to the principles of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Charter and the United Nations Charter as well as international laws and principles, it was added.
As Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran in response to the Saudi government’s killing of famous Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, the kingdom broke diplomatic ties with Iran in January 2016.
Since April 2021, there have been five rounds of talks between the two parties in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq.
In their joint statement, Iran and Saudi Arabia also expressed gratitude to the leaders and government of the People’s Republic of China for hosting and supporting the negotiations held there, as well as to Iraq and Oman for hosting the two sides’ talks in 2021 and 2022.
Shamkhani thanked Iraq for hosting talks in a phone conversation.
Shamkhani spoke on the phone with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani before it was officially announced that relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia had been repaired.
The top security official for Iran praised Iraq for making extraordinary efforts to organize five rounds of negotiations between Tehran and Riyadh.
Also, he praised Baghdad’s “extremely useful” efforts to set up the new accord between Tehran and Riyadh.
Once the agreement was signed, Shamkhani stated that the negotiations were “honest, transparent, and complete.”
The development of regional stability and security, as well as an increase in collaboration between the countries of the Persian Gulf to manage the situation, would undoubtedly result from clearing up misunderstandings and looking to the future in Tehran-Riyadh relations.
