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Iran deputy foreign minister to visit Saudi Arabia

25 August 2014 23:43 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Iran's deputy foreign minister will visit Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for the first bilateral talks between the Middle East's most intractable Muslim rivals since Iran's political landscape shifted in 2013, media in both countries reported, APA reports quoting Reuters.

Shi'ite Muslim Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia are enmeshed in a struggle for influence across the Middle East and they support opposing sides in wars and political disputes in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain and Yemen.

But both Riyadh and Tehran welcomed this month's nomination of Haider al-Abadi, a Shi'ite, as prime minister-designate of Iraq, which is battling militants of the Islamic State who have seized swathes of that country in recent months.

Riyadh had long seen Abadi's predecessor, Nouri al-Maliki, also a Shi'ite, as being too close to Tehran.

The deputy foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, left Tehran on Monday, Iran's state news agency IRNA reported.

Riyadh officials were not available to comment, but Saudi-owned satellite news channel al-Arabiya said the Iranian minister would arrive on Tuesday for talks.

In another bout of regional diplomacy on Monday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif met senior Iraqi Shi'ite clerics who played a key role in the country's political crisis by urging Maliki to step down.

"The significance of Abdollahian's visit to Saudi Arabia is that it coincides with efforts to form a new government in Iraq. It also coincides with Zarif's tour of Iraq, his second since becoming foreign minister," said Mohammad Ali Shabani, an Iran analyst based in Tehran.