Iranian, UAE Leaders to Meet Soon

The Iranian parliament announced that President Ibrahim Raisi will meet soon with the UAE President, Mohammed bin Zayed.

Yaqoub Rezazadeh, a member of Parliament's National Security Committee, said contacts between the foreign ministers of Iran and the UAE began after the recent meeting of the Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council with the president of the UAE, and the meeting was well evaluated.

Rezazadeh, a member of the National Security Committee in Parliament stated that after Shamkhani visits the UAE, there will see a development in political relations between Iran and the UAE," adding that the Emirati president meets the Iranian president soon, and this meeting may take place in Iran or the UAE.

Last Tuesday, Iranian media reported that Tehran had appointed a new ambassador to the UAE, after 8 years of vacancy.

The ISNA news agency reported, quoting its sources, that the new Iranian ambassador to the UAE is Reza Amiri, the Director General of Iranian National Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

It is noteworthy that last March, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and China issued a joint tripartite statement, in which the three countries announced that Iran and Saudi Arabia had signed an agreement to resume relations between the two countries, under the auspices of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

"The embassies of the two countries are scheduled to open within two months," the statement said.

Relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran have been severed since January 2016, when the execution of the Saudi Shiite cleric, Nimr al-Nimr, in the Kingdom sparked violent demonstrations in Iran, during which the Saudi embassy building in Tehran was attacked and burned, prompting Riyadh to cut off its diplomatic and economic relations with Tehran.