TEHRAN (Dispatches) -- Iraq's foreign minister said he had carried messages between Iran and Saudi Arabia in a continuing attempt to curb a feud involving its two neighbors, Iran's state broadcaster IRIB reported late Saturday.
Relations between the two regional powers worsened after hundreds of people, many of them Iranians, died in a crush at the 2015 Muslim Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. Iran blamed the disaster on organizers' incompetence, and boycotted last year's Hajj.
Ties worsened further when Saudi Arabia executed a Shia cleric a year ago, angry Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran, and Riyadh severed diplomatic relations.
"The (mediation) steps have continued since last year, and I have exchanged messages between the two countries ... because any crisis in Iranian-Saudi relations affects Iraq as well, and a rapprochement between them would also benefit Iraq," Iraq's Ibrahim al-Jaafari was quoted by IRIB's website as saying.
"I have carried oral messages between officials of the two countries in the past few months and we will try to bring their positions closer," Jaafari said.
An Iranian official confirmed on Monday that Saudi Arabia had invited Tehran to discuss arrangements for the annual Hajj.
Iraq sent Jaafari to Tehran a year ago with an offer to mediate in the feud between Saudi Arabia and Iran, reflecting Baghdad's fears that new conflict could affect its military campaign against Daesh.
The Iraqi foreign minister also dismissed the propaganda spread by certain spiteful media outlets targeting cordial relations between Tehran and Baghdad.
Such media hype is aimed at portraying the friendly Iran-Iraq ties as a "Shia threat” in the region, Jaafari said, adding that cultural and religious commonalities between the two countries as well as their common policies on regional issues have strengthened mutual relations.
The Islamic Republic was the first country that recognized the Iraqi government and supported it in its fight against Daesh terrorists, he said.
He emphasized that Iran is providing advisory military assistance to Iraq against the terrorists at the official request of the Iraqi government.
The northern and western parts of Iraq have been in chaos ever since Daesh started its campaign of terror in early June 2014.
The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) says a total of 386 Iraqis were killed and another 1,066 injured in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict in December 2016.