FM Araghchi Visits Saudi Arabia, Qatar for Talks

Date: 09 May 2025 - 22:45

News ID: ۱۳۹۳۶۵

TEHRAN -- Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi will visit Saudi Arabia and Qatar on Saturday, a ministry spokesperson said amid reports that Tehran and Washington may hold a new round of indirect talks.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esameil Baghaei made the announcement on Friday, saying Araghchi’s planned trips are in line with the Islamic Republic’s “principled policy of continuous reinforcement of relations with its neighbors.”
“The foreign minister will travel to Riyadh on Saturday to meet and hold talks with high-ranking Saudi officials,” Baghaei said.
Araghchi, he added, will also head to Doha on Saturday evening to participate in the Iran-Arab World Dialogue Summit.
The remarks came after American news website Axios reported that a fourth round of Iran-U.S. indirect negotiations is expected to take place in the Omani capital of Muscat on Sunday.
The meeting had initially been scheduled for May 3, but it was postponed due to “logistical and technical reasons”.
The two sides have already held three rounds of indirect talks, mediated by Oman, on Tehran’s nuclear program and the removal of U.S. sanctions.
The nuclear diplomacy has unsettled Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is pushing Trump to consider a military option against Iran.
Axios said Trump met Israeli strategic affairs minister Ron Dermer at the White House and discussed the indirect Iran-U.S. talks and the genocidal war on Gaza.
On Friday, Araghchi rejected reports about an alleged secret nuclear site, saying they are supplied by the terrorist cult Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) on Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s order in a bid to sabotage indirect talks between Tehran and Washington.
Araghchi made the remarks in an X post after Fox News released what it claimed to be satellite imagery of a previously undisclosed nuclear facility in Iran’s Semnan Province.
Araghchi said Netanyahu is using “Saddam’s Iranian henchmen” under his policy of dictating what President Donald Trump must do with regard to the Islamic Republic in a desperate attempt to sabotage Iran’s talks with the U.S.
“Like clockwork, more Very Scary Satellite Images are being circulated as Iran-U.S. indirect nuclear talks are set to resume,” he said.
“With his credibility in tatters and exposed as a saboteur, Netanyahu—under his ‘Determining What @realdonaldtrump Can & Cannot Do’ policy—is turning to both old and new sock puppets. This time, he is using Saddam’s Iranian henchmen. They may come cheap, but hiring a literal cult only conveys utter desperation.”
Earlier on Friday, the Iranian mission to the United Nations rejected the report as “absurd”.
“The modus operandi of the terrorist cult known as the MKO demonstrates that it—in a desperate pursuit of recognition—furnishes fabricated reports, disguised as so-called intelligence findings, to Western intelligence services, including those of the United States,” it said in a statement published on X.
“However, once such agencies come to discern the utter unreliability of the absurd reports churned out by the MKO terrorist cult, it then seeks out its next clientele among Western media outlets, aiming to exploit those platforms in order to ride the tide of media momentum.”
The notorious MKO group has a dismal history of perpetrating terrorist attacks against Iranian civilians and officials and killing around 12,000 people since the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.