Iran suspends Saudi Arabia-bound flights due to 'technical disagreement' in normalisation setback

Iran’s national carrier Iran Air has postponed the resumption of flights to Saudi Arabia, in a setback to months of work to mend ties between the two countries.

Saudi officials had failed to issue necessary permits for the thousands of Iranians hoping to head to Mecca and Medina for the Islamic pilgrimage of Umrah, the Iranian state's IRNA news agency said, citing Iran Air spokesman Hesam Ghorbanali.

Iran’s Minister of Culture, Mohammad-Mehdi Esmaeili, said that a "technical disagreement" had arisen between Tehran and Riyadh’s aviation authorities, but added that the issue was "nothing serious".

The flights, which had been scheduled to take off from the capital Tehran, as well as the cities of Isfahan and Mashhad, would have been the first of their kind in eight years.

Riyadh severed relations with Iran in 2016 after its embassy in Tehran and consulate in the northwestern city of Mashhad were attacked during protests over Riyadh's execution of Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

Around 30,000 Iranian pilgrims were due to arrive in Saudi Arabia during two scheduled daily flights, Iran Air had previously announced.

Iran's culture minister had previously promised that before the summer of 2024, around 400,000 people would undertake the Umrah pilgrimage, state-linked media had said.

Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to reestablish relations in March 2023 in a deal brokered by China.

Since then, top Saudi and Iranian diplomats have visited each other's countries and agreed to reopen their embassies.

It has been hoped that the deal would help bring about a peace deal for war-torn Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition has fought the Iran-backed Houthi rebels for almost a decade.

Relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia have been rocky since the 1979 revolution in Tehran, which saw competition between the two countries for influence in the region.