Saudi Arabia wants dialogue after Jordan meeting: Iran minister

Tehran says Saudi Arabia is open to more dialogue with Iran. The Iranian Foreign Minister said this after he met his Saudi counterpart in Jordan. In an Arabic tweet published on Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said he spoke with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud in addition to other counterparts from the region and from France on the sidelines of an Iraq-focused conference in Jordan on Tuesday. He said that Saudi minister assured him of his country’s readiness to continue dialogue with Iran.
The two regional rivals cut diplomatic ties in 2016 after a crowd stormed the Sunni-majority kingdom’s embassy in Tehran following the execution of a prominent Shia leader. The apparent meeting between the foreign ministers in Jordan is a sign that neither side wants to shut the door to dialogue completely, but should not raise expectations for immediate tangible results either. Meanwhile, in a speech on Tuesday, Esmaeil Qaani, the commander of the Quds Force, which is the foreign operations arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), suggested Saudi Arabia was an extension of US efforts in the region.“The main enemies are the criminal US and the Zionist regime [Israel],” he said. “The rest, like the criminal Saudi Arabia, are dregs and are not even worth being considered enemies.”