ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Saudi Arabia and Iran have agreed to hold the first public meeting at the level of foreign ministers in Baghdad in years after five rounds of closed reconciliation meetings facilitated by the Iraqi government, Iraq’s foreign minister told Rudaw on Saturday without elaborating when the meeting will take place. Both rival countries have had thorny relations for years. Saudi Arabia-Iran diplomatic ties severed in 2016 when Iranian protesters attacked the Gulf country’s diplomatic missions in the country after the kingdom executed Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. Since then, both countries have been arch enemies in the region, waging a proxy war in conflict areas like Yemen. Iraq has hosted five closed rounds of talks between both rival countries at the level of intelligence and security heads since April, Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein told Rudaw’s Sangar Abdulrahman on Saturday. He added that Saudi Arabia and Iran have agreed to hold the first meeting at the level of foreign ministers in Baghdad. “The previous meetings between intelligence and security officials but this one will be public,” he said, adding that they have not decided when to invite both foreign ministers to Baghdad as Iraq is “busy,” referring to Iraq’s tensions with neighbouring Turkey over a deadly shelling blamed on Turkish forces. Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told his country's state-owned IRNA on Thursday night that there has been “progress” in the last five rounds of talks with Saudi Arabia, adding that Tehran told Iraqi mediators that it is ready for a new political and security phase with the kingdom, hoping that this will “eventually lead to the return of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran relations to normal.”
