A group of Iranian pilgrims has finally left for Saudi Arabia to perform the holy Umrah. After a long break of 9 years, on Monday (April 22), the pilgrims of this West Asian country left Tehran for the holy city of Mecca to perform Umrah.
Reuters reported this information in a report on Monday.
According to the report, the first group of Iranian Umrah pilgrims in the last 9 years left for Saudi Arabia to perform the holy Umrah on Monday, according to Iran’s official news agency. Basically, the relationship between these two powerful countries in the Middle East has improved in recent years. Iranian media said in December last year that Saudi Arabia has lifted the ban on Iranians who want to perform Umrah. But till Monday, no flight carrying Umrah pilgrims left Iran. And it was termed by Tehran as a ‘technical problem’.
Iran and Saudi Arabia, two countries in the Middle East, agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations in March last year after a long estrangement. As a result, the relationship between these two rival countries once again took a new dimension. And China was the mediator behind the progress of the relations between the two countries.
Basically, since 2016, these two major countries of the Middle East have not had any diplomatic relations. That year, the Saudi embassy in Tehran was attacked after Saudi Arabia executed a Shia leader. And then there was a dramatic deterioration in the relationship between the two countries.
Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran in January 2016 after mainly Iranian protesters attacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran. Since then, tensions have often persisted between these Sunni and Shia-led neighbors. These two countries consider each other as a threat to their regional hegemony.
Besides, in several regional conflicts including the civil wars in Syria and Yemen, Iran and Saudi Arabia were virtually engaged in indirect fighting as opposing sides of each other. And so tensions between Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia and Shia-led Iran were often high.
