Iran and Saudi Arabia are reportedly in contact following a destructive drone attack on a Saudi oil refinery, despite denials from Riyadh.Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani told al-Jazeera TV on Tuesday that Tehran “welcomes any negotiations with Saudi Arabia … because talks with Riyadh can resolve many regional problems and issues.” Iran’s government spokesman Ali Rabiei told journalists that Tehran “has received an indirect message from Riyadh from the leader of another country,” but he refused to say which one.Riyadh’s minister of state for foreign affairs, Adel Jubeir, countered those claims in a series of tweets Wednesday, saying “it is not correct that Saudi Arabia sent a message to Tehran, but that the leader of a friendly country sought to calm the situation and Riyadh told him that its position has always been to seek security and stability in the region.”FILE – Former Iranian President Abolhassan Bani Sadr speaks with Reuters in Versailles, near Paris, France, Jan. 31, 2019.Former Iranian president Abolhassan Bani Sadr told VOA that Iran is “divided between three factions, each of which is vacillating on the current tensions in the Gulf region.”He said that Iran’s hard-line faction, led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s son, Mujtaba, believes that it is useful to take advantage of the current tensions to put Tehran in a better bargaining position with the U.S. The moderate faction, he added, seeks negotiations above all, in order to stop the deterioration of the Iranian economy. A third faction, he noted, changes sides depending on “which way the wind is blowing.”Bani Sadr argued that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is “in a weak position, since he’s not able to militarily retaliate against Tehran [for the recent strikes on Saudi oil facilities], because of [the Trump administration’s] desire not to go to war with Iran.” Bin Salman “has decided to take the only route open to him, which is to negotiate.””The prime ministers of both Iraq and Pakistan have admitted to carrying messages between Riyadh and Tehran,” he added.Dr. Paul Sullivan, a professor at the U.S. National Defense University, told VOA that “any help to reduce tensions in the region and still save face would be welcome.” Pointing to Jubeir’s denial that talks between Riyadh and Tehran are taking place, he noted that it is “understandable that the parties would not want such negotiations to be public. Some diplomacy is best kept quiet.”In a possible sign of goodwill, Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi militia recently released several hundred mostly Yemeni prisoners who had been fighting for the Saudi-led coalition.
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