Tehran, Oct 26.(dpa/GNA) – Senior officials from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are meeting in Tehran in another attempt to find a diplomatic solution to the Iran war, Iranian state broadcaster IRIB reported on Monday.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei told reporters in Tehran that the talks in the Iranian capital were about shared regional security interests, according to state broadcaster Press TV.
Pakistan’s powerful army chief Asim Munir arrived in the early afternoon on Monday, IRIB said. Saudi Arabia’s defence minister, Khalid bin Salman, the brother of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was also due to take part.
Turkish intelligence chief Ä°brahim Kalın would also travel to Tehran for the talks, a diplomat at the Saudi Foreign Ministry said. A meeting with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s powerful Supreme National Security Council, was planned.
The aim was to de-escalate the ongoing conflict and seek diplomatic solutions, the Saudi Foreign Ministry said. Munir had visited Tehran for talks only last week.
Amid the risk of a fresh flare-up of the war with the United States, he is reportedly to have delivered a “last warning” to the Iranian government.
Regional negotiators have their own interest in resolving the conflict Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are part of a new military alliance called the Mecca Pact. On Friday, the foreign ministers of the three countries, together with Egyptian officials, met in Istanbul with the foreign ministers of Germany, Italy, Britain and France.
Israeli Iran expert Danny Citrinowicz said on X that the meeting of Mecca Pact members was “a highly significant development with implications that go well beyond the meetings in Tehran.”
The Gulf states in particular, which had suffered damage to their own infrastructure, had a strong interest in avoiding further military escalation, he said.
Pakistan, too, is pushing for a diplomatic solution out of self-interest, given its heavy dependence on energy supplies from The Gulf.
Mediation efforts in the Iran war are considered deadlocked. Recently there has been repeated speculation that the US, possibly together with Israel, could attack Iran again next week, after the US midterm elections.
GNA