Sheikh Naim Qassem: Iran-Saudi rapprochement is a ‘Fatal Blow’ to US-Israeli project in region

WORLD, March 12 (YPA) – A high-ranking Hezbollah official said the restoration of diplomatic ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia is a “fatal blow” to the American-Israeli project in the Middle East region.

Sheikh Naim Qassem, the Lebanese resistance movement’s deputy secretary general, made the remark in a post on his Twitter account on Saturday after Tehran and Riyadh agreed to re-establish relations and re-open embassies in Chinese-mediated talks seven years after they had severed ties.

“The return of Iranian-Saudi relations is an important turning point for the stability, security and progress of the region, and it is the beginning of good things for their peoples and the peoples of the region,” Qassem wrote in an Arabic-language tweet.

عودة العلاقات الإيرانية السعودية منعطفٌ مهم لاستقرار المنطقة وأمنها وتقدمها، وهي فاتحة خيرات لشعبيهما ولشعوب المنطقة، وهي ضربة موجعة للمشروع الأميركي الإسرائيلي تزيده ترنُّحاً.#الشيخ_نعيم_قاسم

— الشيخ نعيم قاسم (@shnaimkassem) March 11, 2023

“And it is a fatal blow to the American-Israeli project and makes it more precarious,” he added.

Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic relations with Iran in January 2016 after Iranian protesters, enraged by the execution of prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr by the Saudi government, stormed its embassy in Tehran.

The two sides had held five rounds of negotiations in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad since April 2021 to reestablish relations.

E.M