This Wednesday (12) Saudi Arabia received an Iranian delegation and the head of Syrian diplomacy, something unheard of since 2011, within the scope of the thaw in relations between the powers in the region.
The visit of the Iranian delegation comes days after a historic meeting in Beijing between the diplomatic heads of the two countries, who re-established the ties broken in 2016. On the other hand, the Syrian Foreign Minister, Fayçal Meqdad, became the first diplomatic chief of his country visiting Saudi Arabia since the start of the civil war in 2011.
Damascus had been diplomatically isolated since that year’s crackdown on a popular uprising, which evolved into a complex civil war involving several countries and foreign armed groups.
Meqdad discussed with his Saudi counterpart “the necessary measures to reach a complete political solution to the Syrian crisis”, reported the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Riyadh. The objective is to obtain “a national reconciliation, to return Syria to the Arab heart, and to resume its natural role in the Arab world”, he added.
Meqdad’s visit takes place two days before a meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, between nine countries in the region, whose agenda is the return of Syria to the Arab League, from which it has been excluded since 2012. The next ordinary summit meeting of leaders Arabs will take place on May 19 in the kingdom.
Saudi Arabia had severed ties in 2012 with Damascus, where it supported the rebels at the start of the conflict. But after the February 6 earthquake, which devastated Turkey and parts of Syria, Riyadh sent aid to victims, in areas under government control and in rebel zones.
“The Iranians and the Syrians are in Saudi Arabia on the same day. It would have been totally crazy and inconceivable months ago,” an Arab diplomat in Riyadh told AFP.
– Reconciliation between Riyadh and Tehran –
The Saudi-Syrian rapprochement comes after the reestablishment of ties between the rival powers in the Middle East: Iran, Shiite, a great ally of Damascus, and Saudi Arabia, Sunni. Thanks to an agreement sponsored by China, the two countries are expected to reopen their embassies by mid-May and implement economic and security cooperation agreements signed more than 20 years ago.
“The Iranian delegation will take the necessary measures to install the embassy and the general consulate in Riyadh and Jeddah,” announced the spokesman for Tehran’s diplomacy, Nasser Kanani.
The reconciliation of the two countries could have important consequences in the region. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, the two regional powers have harbored an enmity that often translates into opposing positions in regional conflicts, such as those in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.
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