Iran says it has finally received Saudi hajj invite

TEHRAN: Iran said Tuesday it had finally received an official invitation from Saudi Arabia for its pilgrims to attend this year´s hajj, two weeks after Riyadh announced it.

There was no official Iranian delegation at last year´s pilgrimage to the Muslim holy places after Saudi Arabia severed relations with Iran following the torching of its missions in Tehran and Mashhad by protesters in January last year.

It was the first time in three decades that Iranian pilgrims had been absent and the culmination of years of worsening relations over the conflicts in Syria and Yemen.

"The Iranian delegation will travel to Saudi Arabia on February 23... and we hope to get tangible results," hajj affairs representative Ali Ghazi Askar told the Mizan Online news website.

"For the time being, nothing is certain and we will attend the hajj as long as the situation is prepared for us," he said.

"Undoubtedly, there are problems that must be resolved." Negotiations for Iranian pilgrims to join last year´s hajj broke down over the questions of where their visas should be issued and how their security could be ensured following the deaths of 464 Iranians in a stampede at the 2015 hajj.

The tone of the invitation is "not that much different from past letters", Askar said earlier Tuesday. "All matters regarding the hajj -- including accommodation, food, medical affairs, transport, pilgrims´ security, banking and consular issues -- must immediately be studied and appropriate solutions put forward."

The Saudi-owned Al-Hayat newspaper reported on December 30 that Saudi Pilgrimage Minister Mohammed Bentin had opened discussions with more than 80 countries, including Iran, on the arrangements for the 2017 hajj.</s>Iran will send delegation to Saudi Arabia to discuss hajj

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — An Iranian official says a delegation will visit Saudi Arabia next month to discuss plans for this year's hajj pilgrimage.

The official IRNA news agency Wednesday quoted a representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying the Feb. 23 visit comes in response to an invitation from Saudi Arabia.

The representative, Ali Qaziaskar, expressed hope that the visit would lead to a "clear cut" conclusion, saying "we will not attend the hajj ceremony until the situation is resolved."

Iran did not sent its pilgrims to the 2016 hajj after a stampede and crush of pilgrims during the previous year's pilgrimage killed at least 2,426 people, according to an Associated Press count. Iran had the highest death toll with 464 killed.</s>Official: Iran ready to discuss 2017 hajj with Saudi Arabia

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — A senior Tehran official says Iranian authorities are ready to "participate in bilateral talks" with Saudi Arabia about the 2017 hajj pilgrimage.

The official IRNA news agency late on Monday quoted Ali Qaziaskar, a representative of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as saying that Iran like other Islamic countries received an invitation letter from Riyadh to discuss the next pilgrimage.

Iran boycotted the 2016 hajj after a stampede and crush of pilgrims during the previous year's pilgrimage killed at least 2,426 people, according to an Associated Press count. Iran had the highest death toll of any country, with 464 killed.

A few months later, Riyadh cut diplomatic relations with Tehran after angry Iranians attacked Saudi diplomatic missions following the kingdom's execution of a Saudi Shiite cleric.</s>Iran has received an invitation from Saudi Arabia to discuss preparations for the next annual Hajj pilgrimage, a media report said on Tuesday. Ali Qazi-Askar, Iran’s representative for Hajj ceremonies noted that Iran has officially received Saudi Arabia’s invitation to meet and hold bilateral talks on the Hajj. Talks would focus on accommodation, transportation, safety, medical care, visas and banking, he said, adding that Iran would respond to the invitation over the next few days.

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Also, Like us on facebook</s>Iran has received an invitation from Saudi Arabia to discuss preparations for the next annual Hajj pilgrimage, a media report said on Tuesday. Ali Qazi-Askar, Iran’s representative for Hajj ceremonies noted that Iran has officially received Saudi Arabia’s invitation to meet and hold bilateral talks on the Hajj. Talks would focus on accommodation, transportation, safety,…

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This post was syndicated from The Herald Nigeria – 24/7 News updates from Nigeria. Click here to read the full text on the original website.

Also, Like us on facebook</s>" A senior Tehran official says Iranian authorities are ready to "participate in bilateral talks" with Saudi Arabia about the 2017 hajj pilgrimage. The official IRNA news agency late on Monday quoted Ali Qaziaskar, a representative of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as saying that Iran like other Islamic countries received an invitation letter from Riyadh to discuss the next pilgrimage.

Start the conversation, or Read more at The New Zealand Herald.</s>Iran said Tuesday it had finally received an official invitation from Saudi Arabia for its pilgrims to attend this year’s hajj, two weeks after Riyadh announced it.

There was no official Iranian delegation at last year’s Hajj pilgrimage after Saudi Arabia severed relations with Iran following the torching of its missions in Tehran and Mashhad by protesters last January.

It was the first time in three decades that Iranian pilgrims had been absent and the culmination of years of worsening relations over the conflicts in Syria and Yemen.

The tone is “not that much different from past letters”, hajj affairs representative Ali Ghazi Askar said, adding that Iran would respond in the coming days.

“All matters regarding the hajj — including accommodation, food, medical affairs, transport, pilgrims’ security, banking and consular issues — must immediately be studied and appropriate solutions put forward.”

Negotiations for Iranian pilgrims to join last year’s hajj broke down over the questions of where their visas should be issued and how their security could be assured following the deaths of 464 in a stampede at the 2015 hajj.

The Saudi-owned Al-Hayat newspaper reported on December 30 that Saudi Pilgrimage Minister Mohammed Bentin had opened discussions with more than 80 countries, including Iran, on the arrangements for the 2017 hajj.

There was no immediate word on when or where the discussions might take place. –</s>DUBAI - An Iranian official confirmed on Monday that Saudi Arabia had invited Tehran to discuss arrangements for the annual Muslim Haj, which Iran boycotted last year after hundreds died in a crush at the 2015 pilgrimage.

Most were Iranians, and the incident infuriated Tehran. Soon after, ties between the two regional rivals worsened further when Saudi Arabia executed a Shia cleric, angry Iranians stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran, and Riyadh severed diplomatic relations.

Last year, Iran did not send any of its citizens to the Haj, accusing Saudi Arabia of failing to guarantee safety. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called on Muslim countries to end Saudi control of the pilgrimage, while Riyadh has accused Iran of politicising the 2015 disaster.

On Monday, Ali Ghaziaskar, Khamenei's representative in Haj affairs, said Iran had "officially received Saudi Arabia's invitation to meet and hold bilateral talks on the Haj".

The state news agency IRNA quoted him as saying the talks would be about accommodation, transportation, safety, medical care, visas and banking, and that Iran would respond in the coming days.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry last week denied reports in two Arabic newspapers that Iran had received an invitation from Saudi Arabia to next year's Haj.</s>TEHRAN: Iran said Tuesday it had finally received an official invitation from Saudi Arabia for its pilgrims to attend this year´s hajj, two weeks after Riyadh announced it.

There was no official Iranian delegation at last year´s pilgrimage to the Muslim holy places after Saudi Arabia severed relations with Iran following the torching of its missions in Tehran and Mashhad by protesters in January last year.

It was the first time in three decades that Iranian pilgrims had been absent and the culmination of years of worsening relations over the conflicts in Syria and Yemen.

"The Iranian delegation will travel to Saudi Arabia on February 23... and we hope to get tangible results," hajj affairs representative Ali Ghazi Askar told the Mizan Online news website.

"For the time being, nothing is certain and we will attend the hajj as long as the situation is prepared for us," he said.

"Undoubtedly, there are problems that must be resolved." Negotiations for Iranian pilgrims to join last year´s hajj broke down over the questions of where their visas should be issued and how their security could be ensured following the deaths of 464 Iranians in a stampede at the 2015 hajj.

The tone of the invitation is "not that much different from past letters", Askar said earlier Tuesday. "All matters regarding the hajj -- including accommodation, food, medical affairs, transport, pilgrims´ security, banking and consular issues -- must immediately be studied and appropriate solutions put forward."

The Saudi-owned Al-Hayat newspaper reported on December 30 that Saudi Pilgrimage Minister Mohammed Bentin had opened discussions with more than 80 countries, including Iran, on the arrangements for the 2017 hajj.

Iran says it has finally received Saudi hajj invite was posted in World of TheNews International - https://www.thenews.com.pk on January 10, 2017 and was last updated on January 10, 2017. This news story is related to Latest/178131-Iran-says-it-has-finally-received-Saudi-hajj-invite/ - breaking news, latest news, pakistan ne. Permanent link to the news story "Iran says it has finally received Saudi hajj invite" is https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/178131-Iran-says-it-has-finally-received-Saudi-hajj-invite.</s>2016 was not a good year for Saudi Arabia. Sharply lower oil prices sparked a domestic financial crisis that is forcing the country to restructure its economy.

Saudi Arabia’s bitter struggle with Iran for regional hegemony has embroiled it in wars and political conflicts it has been unable to win, leaving it no alternative but to admit failure or compromise. If 2016 was bad, 2017 threatens to be worse.

Saudi Arabia closed out 2016 with a ceasefire in Syria and prospects for peace talks orchestrated by Russia and Turkey that significantly weakened Saudi-backed rebel groups and strengthened Iran’s key Middle East ally, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

Saudi Arabia’s only hope of influencing events in Syria is if either the rebels, jihadists who are not part of the ceasefire, or Mr. Al-Assad sabotage it for their own reasons.

But even then, the fall of Aleppo, the rebel’s last major urban holdout, threatens to reduce the anti-Assad resistance to a largely rural insurgency.

Sensitive to any challenge to its custodianship of Islam’s two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia’s role is in the spotlight as it negotiates modalities with some 80 countries for the 2017 haj.

Saudi Arabia and Iran failed to reach an agreement for the 2016 pilgrimage, leaving the Islamic republic without a quote for pilgrims and the kingdom’s management of the haj challenged.

An almost two-year long military campaign in Yemen, an exercise that was supposed to be cakewalk, has turned into a quagmire for the kingdom. Saudi Arabia is looking for a face-saving exit strategy from a neighbour that its military has devastated.

However, the presumed military “successes” have not achieved the real goal — removing Saudi Arabia’s enemies, the Iranian-backed Houthis and former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, from power in much of the country, including the capital Sana’a. The campaign has sparked widespread anti-Saudi sentiment among significant numbers of Yemenis.

The Yemen campaign has moreover cast a shadow over the capabilities of a country that ranks as the world’s second-largest importer of military equipment.

One clear-cut indication of Saudi incompetence is that the United States, a most steadfast Saudi ally, late last year halted the sale of air-dropped and precision-guided munitions.

It wants to wait until it has better trained Saudi forces in their targeting and use of the weapons.

The Saudi air force’s repeated targeting by design or default of civilian targets in Yemen in which large numbers of innocent people were killed has opened the kingdom to assertions of war crimes.

Saudi Arabia’s inability to claim either political or military benefit from the Yemen war threatens to put on the line the credibility of Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Sultan, the powerful son of King Salman. He is also the man who is in charge of turning the kingdom’s economy around.

Many believe that King Salman is grooming Prince Mohammed as his successor despite objections from factions within the Al Saud family.

No better news from Egypt

Similarly, Saudi Arabia’s use of its political and financial muscle to bring Egyptian-general-turned president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi to power in a military coup in 2013 has not yielded much.

The basic idea — to stabilize Egypt’s deteriorating economy — has failed to achieve a return. Instead, Saudi Arabia and the Arab world’s most populous nation are at loggerheads over Iran, Syria and various other issues.

Saudi Arabia suspended in October a $23 billion agreement to supply Egypt with 700,000 tons of petroleum products every month after Egypt supported a Russian resolution on Syria in the United Nations Security Council. The sanctions and cooling of relations have done little to make Mr. Al-Sisi more empathetic to Saudi concerns.

Finally, on the foreign police and defence front, this month’s inauguration of Donald J. Trump could prove to be a mixed bag that may aggravate Saudi Arabia’s problems.

Mr. Trump has suggested that he may back away from U.S. support for anti-Assad rebels in Syria and focus in cooperation with Moscow on defeating the Islamic State.

That effectively would strengthen the free hand Iran, Russia and Mr. Al-Assad already have in Syria.

The President-elect has also hinted that he may scrap the international community’s nuclear agreement with Iran. Saudi Arabia has called on Mr. Trump not to cancel the agreement.

Instead, it wants to hold Iran to the fire over its support for proxies in Arab countries. A cancellation of the agreement could force Saudi Arabia into a nuclear arms race with Iran.

As if all of that weren’t bad enough, Mr. Trump’s suggestions that he may be more sympathetic to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank threatens to put the kingdom on the spot at a time that it has found common ground with Israel in seeking to halt Iranian regional advances.

Mr. Trump’s pledge to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and his nominee as ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, who describes Jerusalem as the “eternal capital of the Jewish state” could further strain already trouble relations with the United States.

Possible widespread protests against relocation of the embassy could move Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, to break off diplomatic relations with the United States and/or take other retaliatory steps.

Saudi Arabia is betting that Mr. Trump, the president, will rely on the experience of Mr. Trump, the businessman, to cut deals.

The president-elect, however, has suggested that he could stop oil imports from the kingdom in his bid to make the United Sates energy independent. At one point, during the election campaign, he also blamed Saudi Arabia for the 9/11 attacks.

Uncertainty in its relationship with the United States could not come at a worse moment for the kingdom. The Saudi government, beyond its foreign policy and military setbacks, has begun to unilaterally rewrite the social contract that underwrites it.

The rewriting constitutes the end of a bargain involving a cradle-to-grave welfare system in exchange for surrender of political rights and adherence to Wahhabi social mores.

Cutbacks on subsidies, increased utility prices, reduced spending on education and social services, and streamlining of the bureaucracy in a country in which the state employs two thirds of the citizenry is a tricky business.

It’s even trickier in an environment in which the country’s basic power structure, a power sharing agreement between the ruling Al Saud family and the country’s religious establishment, is being challenged by the demands of economic and social change and increasing international association of Wahhabism with Islamic militancy.

King Salman and Prince Mohammed have a full plate for 2017. For them and the Al Sauds, the core issue is survival. With no credible alternative to the Al Sauds and the Middle East and North Africa’s recent experience of popular protest producing civil wars, jihadism and increased repression, Saudis are unlikely to revolt.

They will however demand a greater say and greater accountability, concepts the government has so far countered with increased suppression and authoritarianism.
Iran confirms receipt of Saudi Arabian invitation to discuss bilateral talk for Hajj-2017. The Iranian delegation is expected to travel to Saudi Arabia on 23 February this year for participation in the next pilgrimage.