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Iran President Hassan Rouhani welcomed the emir of Qatar at Tehran’s Sa’dabad Cultural Complex on Sunday, and the senior officials discussed development of issues at hand.

The pair are expected to hold private talks. Later, Iranian and Qatari delegations will engage in negotiations.

State-run Qatar News Agency (QNA) said the talks will focus on “bilateral relations between the two countries and ways of promoting and enhancing them, as well as the latest developments in the region and the regional and international issues of mutual concern.”

Last Saturday, Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani visited Tehran after the US assassination of the Middle East’s most prominent anti-terror commander General Qassem Soleimani.

Qatar is close to the US and hosts Washington’s largest military base in the region, but it also enjoys strong ties with Tehran, with whom it shares the world’s largest gas field.

President Rouhani told the Qatari FM that Washington would pay a heavy price for its assassination and on Wednesday, Iran pounded two US airbases in Iraq with a volley of ballistic missiles.

On Saturday, NBC News said the terrorist US operation used Israeli intelligence and was run from the US Central Command (CENTCOM) headquarters in Qatar.

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“Qatar is at a position that allows it to mediate and carry out this mission. It has significant relationship with the US on one hand and on the other with Iran thanks to its a geographic location,” the report said.

“Doha’s crisis with four Arab countries led Qatar to rely on Tehran for supplying its food and for having its passing flights travel through Iran’s airspace,” the same report confirmed.

On June 5, 2018, Saudi Arabia along with the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt cut ties with Qatar and introduced sanctions on the country for its relations with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain also closed their air, sea, and land routes to the country.

At the time, Iran continued sending food cargoes to Qatar while it also opened its airspace to about 100 more Qatari flights a day.

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The Asia Cooperation Dialogue was established as an intergovernmental forum in 2002 to develop cooperation between Asian countries and improve the competitiveness of Asia at the global level.

The body was founded by 18 states back in 2002 , but now it consists of 34 Asian countries, namely Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.

The 16th ministerial meeting of the Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD) kicked off yesterday and will wrap up on May 2.

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