DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The
UAE said Sunday that its ambassador to
Tehran would resume duties within days, six years after ties were downgraded in
support of Saudi Arabia.
اضافة اعلان
Ambassador Saif
Mohammed Al-Zaabi “will resume his duties at the UAE embassy in the Islamic
republic of Iran in the coming days to contribute to further advancing
bilateral relations”, the Emirati foreign ministry said in a statement.
The move seeks
to “achieve the common interests of the two countries and the wider region”, it
added.
With Middle East
political alignments shifting, UAE presidential adviser
Anwar Gargash in
mid-July called for an easing of regional tensions and signaled the ambassador’s
possible return.
The UAE scaled
back its ties with the Islamic republic in 2016, in solidarity with Saudi
Arabia, after Iranian protesters attacked the kingdom’s diplomatic missions in
Iran following Riyadh’s execution of Shiite Muslim cleric Nimr Al-Nimr.
Other Arab Gulf
countries including Kuwait made similar moves.
Iran said
earlier this month that Kuwait had sent its first ambassador to Tehran since
2016.
In July, the
Emirati and Iranian foreign ministers held a telephone conversation and
discussed boosting ties, UAE state media reported at the time.
The oil-rich UAE
has previously said that
Gulf Arab states should take part in “collective
diplomacy” to reach an agreement with Iran, which has been in talks with
Western powers on reviving a 2015 nuclear deal.
On Tuesday the
EU and US said they were studying Iran’s response to a “final” draft of such an
agreement.
In 2020, the UAE
established diplomatic relations with Israel, a move which Tehran condemned.
But Abu Dhabi has been
pursuing a policy of rapprochement with former regional rivals including Qatar
and Turkey as well as Iran, with which it had maintained strong economic ties
despite the diplomatic downgrade.
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