Playing mediator: Army chief, PM to visit Iran, Saudi Arabia

The prime minister and the COAS will leave tomorrow on a two-day emergency visit.

They will meet the Iranian president and Saudi king during their visits and try all-out to resolve the ongoing Saudi-Iran diplomatic row.

Prime Minister House hasn’t issued any statement in this regard.

Defence Minister Khwaja Asif was scheduled to Tehran on a two-day visit today, however the PM directed cancellation of his visit.

Asif had to visit Iran for promoting defence ties between the two countries.

Saudi-Iran row escalated after the Saudi authorities executed SHia cleric Nimr al-Nimr  among dozens of convicted people.

After the execution of Nimr, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard elite military force said a “harsh revenge” would strike Saudi’s ruling Al-Saud family in the near future.

Riyadh’s expulsion of Iran’s envoy after another storming of its Tehran embassy, this time in response to the Saudi execution of Shi’ite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr, raised the heat again, making the region’s underlying conflict even harder to resolve.

Last year, Riyadh began a war in Yemen to stop an Iran-allied militia seizing power in its southern neighbor and boosted support to Syrian rebels against Tehran’s ally President Bashar al-Assad. Its execution of Nimr, while mainly driven by domestic politics, was also part of that open confrontation with Iran, according to political analysts.