RIYADH (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed on Friday to restore diplomatic ties after a seven-year rift that fueled tensions in the Gulf and regional conflicts from Yemen to Syria.
The deal was reached after talks in Beijing between senior security officials from the two Middle Eastern powers.
“As a result of these discussions, Iran and Saudi Arabia have agreed to resume diplomatic relations and reopen their embassies… within two months,” Iran’s official Irna news agency reported.
In a joint statement, taken up by the media of the two countries, Riyadh and Tehran underline their desire to mutually respect their sovereignty and not to interfere in their respective internal affairs.
According to the official Saudi news agency SPA, Saudi Arabia and Iran have also decided to activate a security cooperation agreement signed in 2001, as well as another agreement covering trade, economy and investment.
Quoted by the Iranian agency Nours, the secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, signatory of this reconciliation agreement alongside his Saudi counterpart Moussaed ben Mohamed al Aïban, praised the role of China in this rapprochement.
Both Saudi Arabia and Iran thanked the Sultanate of Oman for hosting talks between the two countries in 2021 and 2022.
Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia have been at odds for years and clash in proxy wars.
Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic ties with Iran in 2016 following an attack on its embassy in Tehran by Iranian demonstrators protesting against the execution of a Shiite imam by Riyadh.
A senior Iranian official said the deal announced on Friday had been endorsed by the Supreme Leader of the Iranian Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“It is for this reason that Shamkhani traveled to China as a representative of the Supreme Leader,” the official told Reuters.
A White House security spokesman said he was aware of the deal and welcomed all efforts to end the war in Yemen and reduce tensions in the Middle East.
France welcomes the decision taken by Saudi Arabia and Iran and calls on Tehran to renounce its destabilizing actions, the Foreign Ministry announced in a press release.
(Report Nayera Abdallah and Tala Ramadan, French version by Matthieu Protard, Jean-Stéphane Brosse and Camille Raynaud, edited by Kate Entringer and Blandine Hénault)
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