The Financial Times reports on Sunday that Saudi and Iranian officials held the first round of their bilateral talks in Baghdad on April 9 and the next round is scheduled to take place next week. Citing regional officials, the newspaper said the Yemeni Ansarallah’s attacks on Saudi Arabia were discussed in the negotiations.

Reuters confirmed the Saudi-Iranian talks, saying they touched on Lebanon, which is facing a political vacuum amid a dire financial crisis.

Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic relations with Iran in January 2016 after Iranian protesters, enraged by the Saudi execution of prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimer al-Nimr, stormed its embassy in Tehran. Since then, Saudi Arabia have struck a tough tone on Iran and strongly supported former U.S. President Donald Trump’s so-called “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.

The reported talks in Baghdad are thought to be the first serious contact between Tehran and Riyadh since 2016.

Saudi Arabia denied the talks. Citing a senior Saudi official, the Saudi-owned Arab News said no direct talks have been held with Iran.

The Beirut-based news channel Al Mayadeen also rejected that Saudi Arabia and Iran held talks in Iraq. Citing an Iranian source, the news channel said the reports of Saudi-Iranian talks were untrue. However, an Iranian official told Reuters that the talks were “a low-level meeting to explore whether there might be a way to ease ongoing tensions in the region.”

The talks are not surprising, at least from the Iranian standpoint; and the Saudi rush to deny the reports is also understandable. Iran has long been calling for talks with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries as well. But the Iranian calls often fell on deaf ears in Riyadh largely because the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Mohammad bin Salman had been betting that the Trump pressures on Iran would make Tehran blink first and acquiesce to his demands, which center on allegations of Iranian interference in something none of Iran’s business, i.e. the Arab world.

The Saudi crown prince, also known as MBS, brushed away all of Iran’s offers of compromise over the past few years, adopting a wait-and-see approach toward Iran to see how Trump’s pressures would end with Iran. These pressures failed to bring Iran to its knees, something that even Biden officials, the current allies of MBS, openly admit.

Regardless of MBS’s close relations with the Trump administration, Iran continued to extend its hand to the Saudis after Trump lost the U.S. presidential election in November. Earlier this year, Saeed Khatibzadeh, spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, expressed Iran’s readiness to patch up relations with Saudi Arabia. He pointed out that if Riyadh seriously puts policy reforms on its agenda and concludes that the solution to problems lies in “regional cooperation,” Iran will be the first country to welcome these reforms.

“We have always underlined that regional countries should arrive at a common understanding regarding the regional problems,” Khatibzadeh stated, noting that such understanding would help establish a “security mechanism” that could be used to govern the region.

“The Saudis may have some concerns, and by the way, we emphasize that we need to talk about these concerns,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

But the Saudis refused to seize on Iran’s offers of cooperation. And now that Iran has resumed nuclear talks with the remaining parties to a 2015 nuclear deal – officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)- the Saudis are busy asking the negotiating partners of Iran to give them a seat at the negotiations room. They do so while Iran, as well as Russia, called on them to resolve outstanding regional issues separately from the JCPOA negotiations.

Nayef Al-Hajraf, the secretary general of the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council, has recently sent a letter to the negotiating parties in Vienna – China, Russia, France, the U.S., UK, and Germany-, saying that the Iran nuclear deal talks in Vienna must address the concerns and interests of the Persian Gulf countries to boost security and stability in the region. In addition, Secretary-General of the Arab League Ahmad Abul Gheit issued a statement calling for a similar thing.

Khatibzadeh strongly rejected the “interventionist” remarks of Al-Hajraf and Abul Gheit.

“These statements are not aimed at calling for cooperation; rather, they seek to disrupt the trend of technical talks in Vienna,” he said.

“The secretaries general of these institutions should know that Iran is a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and all of Iran’s nuclear activities are monitored by the safeguards programs of this agency,” said the spokesman.

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Bin Salman, known as MBS, will not wait for his father King Salman to die because his father’s presence gives legitimacy to the son, and he wants to use the summit in November as the stage for his accession to the throne, sources briefed about the plans told the Middle East Eye.

Instead, MBS will force his father, who suffers from dementia but is in otherwise good health, to abdicate, the sources said.

This will finish the job started when MBS ousted his elder cousin Prince Mohammed bin Nayef from the position of the crown prince, the sources said.

“He wants to be sure while his father is there, he becomes the king,” one source said. Over the weekend pictures were released of King Salman greeting ambassadors, to disprove rumors sparked by the purge that the king had died. Sources at the King Faisal Hospital dedicated to the care of members of the Royal Family also dispelled those rumors.

Before his arrest on Friday, Prince Ahmed, the king’s younger full brother, was given one last chance, after years of public opposition, to come aboard the MBS project, and he refused, the sources said.

“There was pressure on Ahmed to give his full support to MBS. He met with the king, and Salman and others in the court used polite words to encourage him to back his son,” a second source said.

“Ahmed made it clear he would not support this project. He did not give his word. Ahmed told the king he himself was not keen to become king but would look to others to come forward.”

Meanwhile, more details emerged about the circumstances of Ahmed’s arrest.

According to the sources, Ahmed was not planning a coup before his arrest on Friday morning, as was claimed in one briefing given to Reuters, primarily because the prince had no power to make such a move.

“Prince Ahmed would have openly objected to his nephew’s accession, as a member of the Allegiance Council, if the king dies and the question of accession to the throne comes formally before it,” the source said.

“He would have clearly said no. But there was no attempted coup.”

The Allegiance Council, or Beya, is the body which still nominally has to approve MBS’s accession to the throne.

The source said Ahmed had just returned from a falconry hunting trip abroad and had given a reception for his close circle on Thursday night.

Ahmed was passed a message that the king wanted to see him on Friday morning. This was about another arrested prince, Faisal bin Abdelrahman, whose case Ahmed had raised with Salman some weeks ago.

On Friday morning, Prince Ahmed went to the royal palace with his security detail. He was arrested the moment he entered the king’s compound.

“He did not see the king. It was total betrayal,” the source said. According to him, a second member of the Allegiance Council was also arrested in the purge.

Asked why this purge was launched now, the sources cited external and internal reasons.

They said MBS was becoming concerned about the possibility that Donald Trump would not secure a second term of office as US president.

All the presidential candidates remaining in the Democratic race were declared critics of the crown prince and had openly condemned him for ordering the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018.

Trump and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have consistently refused to hold the crown prince accountable for the murder of Khashoggi and blocked calls for a criminal investigation by the FBI or the UN.

In his last interview on the subject published in June last year, Trump said the Khashoggi murder “really didn’t come up” in the discussions he held with MBS.

“They spend $400bn to $450bn over a period of time, all money, all jobs, buying equipment,” Trump said.

“And by the way, if they don’t do business with us, you know what they do? They’ll do business with the Russians or with the Chinese.”

Secondly, the sources claimed that the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed, known as MBZ, who has mentored MBS and introduced him to the Trump clan before he became president, was also in on the scheme.

Hamed al Mazroui, a well-known blogger with links to MBZ, whose tweets were among the first to break the news of the purge in the Ritz Carlton in November 2017 and the 2017 start to the siege of Qatar by Saudi Arabia and others, tweeted two words in Arabic before the latest arrests were widely known. They translate as “Checkmate”.

“MbZ is instrumental in each move his protege makes. The more mistakes MbS makes and the greater the instability he causes, the greater the leverage bin Zayed has over the affairs of Saudi,” the source said.

Internally, MBS’s reforms are not going well.

The two latest hitches to his reform plan are the rapid fall in the price of oil, to below the level at which the state budget needs for its income, and his increasing unpopularity in the Muslim world, months before the annual Hajj is due to start.

Held back by curbs on oil output negotiated by Opec, Saudi’s economy expanded just 0.3 percent in 2019, down from 2.4 percent a year earlier and short of the government’s forecast of 0.4 percent.

MBS’s economic woes deepened on Sunday, when the Saudi stock market dived by 8.3 percent, the lowest closing since November 2017, when he launched the first round of purges.

Shares in Saudi Aramco dropped below their IPO price of 32 riyals ($8.50) for the first time, losing 9.1 percent to 30 riyals.

Controversy has also stalked MBS’s decision to effectively close the borders of the kingdom to most visitors and all Umrah pilgrims, because of the coronavirus epidemic.

All these factors, sources say, convinced MBS to strike now against the last remaining hurdles in the way of his accession to the throne.

“This purge is different from the first one in 2017 . Then, Mbs was at the height of his popularity as a young and bold reformer. He sold the purge as an anti-corruption campaign, and it was popular even with journalists like Khashoggi.  This purge comes after a series of scandals. Its as if MBS is trying to evade one scandal by moving on to an even bigger one.” another high placed Saudi critic said.

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Riyadh police said about 120 men and women have been arrested over the past week for offending public morals, including wearing “inappropriate clothes”, and unspecified penalties imposed on the violators.

Another 88 people were arrested in several harassment cases, the police said in a string of statements posted on Twitter.

The arrests were made after a number of women complained on social media that they were harassed at the biggest electronic music festival MDL Beast in Riyadh earlier this month.

No further details were given, including the duration of the detentions.

Saudi Arabia de facto ruler bin Salman has allegedly eased social restrictions in the ultra-conservative kingdom, lifting decades-long bans on cinemas and women drivers due to modernization plan.

The so-called reforms, however, are widely believed to be fake, particularly after the arrest of several prominent female activists, which followed a much-hyped decision by bin Salman to lift a ban on women’s driving. Among those detained were some of the proponents of the ban’s removal.

Riyadh said in September that it would penalize violations of “public decency”, including wearing immodest clothing.

However, the public decency guidelines are widely perceived to be vague and loose, which have sparked fears that they would be open to interpretation.

Despite the relaxation of restrictions on entertainment and fun in Saudi Arabia, the kingdom’s human rights record has not improved as thousands of dissidents are languishing behind bars, many of them suffering torture.

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TEHRAN (Iran News) – Saudi Arabia is quietly trying to mend fences with Iran and other regional rivals as officials in the kingdom have grown more worried about the risks conflict poses to its oil-dependent economy.

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The crown prince made the decision of Aramco IPO at a meeting he chaired on Friday and an official announcement is likely as soon as Sunday, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named before an official statement, Bloomberg reported.

The partial privatization will be a deal like few others and the biggest change to Saudi oil industry since the company was nationalized in the 1970s. Aramco, which pumps 10% of the world’s oil from giant fields beneath the kingdom’s barren deserts, is the backbone of the kingdom’s economic and social stability.

First suggested by the prince in 2016, Aramco IPO was delayed several times as international investors balked at the $2 trillion valuation he placed on the company. An earlier plan to kick off the share sale in mid-October was shelved after bankers received lukewarm interest from money managers, and the deal will likely rely heavily on Saudi money.

It is not clear if the prince is willing to accept a lower valuation, but he may need to be satisfied with a figure closer to $1.7 trillion, if he wants the deal to go ahead, people have said.

In a bid to make the stock more attractive, Aramco plans to pay $75 billion in dividends next year. That would give investors a yield of 3.75% if the company achieves its ambition of a $2 trillion valuation. That’s a decent payout in a low-interest-rate world, but it’s a lower dividend yield than at other big oil firms.

Investors who buy into the IPO have been guaranteed that the dividend won’t fall until after 2024, regardless of what happens to oil prices. Instead, Aramco will cut back on payouts to the government if it has to reduce the total dividend to less than $75 billion.

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Khashoggi, 59, was killed a year ago by a team of Saudi agents in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul and his dismembered body has not been found.

Saudi Arabia has consistently denied that MBS ordered the killing, but a UN investigator has said there was “credible evidence” of the crown prince’s liability that warrants further investigation while the CIA has reportedly concluded that the killing was probably ordered by the prince.

In a petition filed to the ICC’s chief prosecutor in July and made public on Wednesday, the anniversary of Khashoggi’s killing, the US-based law firm Fein & Delvalle requested that the prosecutor petition the UN Security Council to refer the crown prince’s alleged crimes to the ICC.

“Mohammed Bin Salman, through command or superior responsibility, is guilty of murder, torture, rape, extortion, illegal detentions, wrongful prosecution and the death penalty, i.e., crimes against humanity as defined in Article 7 of the Rome Statute,” the filing argues.

“The victims have been selected because of their opposition to the Crown Prince’s merciless tyranny,” it adds.

The petition was filed on behalf of an anonymous human rights organisation, whose identity has been redacted in the filing.

It was not clear whether the Hague-based court would respond to the petition, as it only has jurisdiction over crimes committed on the territory of its member states. Neither Saudi Arabia nor Turkey is a member of the court.

Khashoggi was an established and respected journalist who at the time of his murder was a resident of the United States and a columnist for the Washington Post newspaper. In a number of his columns for the Post, he was critical of MBS’s domestic and international policies, including the Saudi-led coalition’s war in Yemen.

In the weeks after his murder, the Saudi government denied that he had been killed in the consulate, insisting he had left soon after he arrived. But after Turkish officials shared information about the murder with domestic and international news media, Riyadh changed its narrative, saying that he was killed by a team of “rogue” Saudi agents.

Under international pressure, the Saudi prosecutor opened an investigation into the murder and 11 suspects have been put on trial in the kingdom, with the attorney general seeking the death penalty for five of the accused.

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Speaking to the US network CBS on its 60 Minutes programme, MBS said: “Absolutely not,” when asked if he ordered Khashoggi killing. Iran news quotes the interview by ILNA.

But he said he took full responsibility, “since it was committed by individuals working for the Saudi government”.

“This was a mistake. And I must take all actions to avoid such a thing in the future,” MBS said of the killing, which he called “heinous”.

Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, was last seen at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 last year, where he was collecting documentation before his wedding. His body was dismembered and removed from the building, according to reports, and his remains have not been found.

MBS’s comments echo those made in a trailer to a PBS documentary due to air this week in which he said: “I get all the responsibility because it happened under my watch”.

Speaking last week after the release of the trailer, Khashoggi’s fiancee Hatice Cengiz described the prince’s comments as a “pure political manoeuvre”.

“By saying that everything happened under his watch, he’s sending the world a message that he’s more influential than the king of Saudi Arabia, and is the real head of the country,” Cengiz said.

‘No exception’

The CIA and some Western governments have said they believe MBS ordered Khashoggi’s killing, but Saudi officials have repeatedly said he had no role.

After initial denials of the murder, the Saudis blamed it on rogue operatives. The public prosecutor said the then-deputy intelligence chief ordered the repatriation of Khashoggi, a royal insider who became an outspoken critic, but the lead negotiator ordered him killed after discussions for his return failed.

Asked how the Khashoggi killing could have happened without him knowing about it, MBS told 60 Minutes: “Some think that I should know what three million people working for the Saudi government do daily? It’s impossible that the three million would send their daily reports to the leader or the second-highest person in the Saudi government.”

He insisted that “the investigations are being carried out, and once charges are proven against someone, regardless of their rank, it will be taken to court, no exception made.”

Khalil Jahshan, executive director of the Arab Center in Washington, DC, told Al Jazeera that the interview was a “good exercise in public relations for Saudi Arabia”, but raised more questions than it answered.

“There are legal issues here,” he said. “Who ordered the killing? He admits that some Saudi citizens – they are officials within his government – perpetrated what he called ‘this heinous crime’ – but who gave the order? if it weren’t him, who else?”

UN rapporteur Agnes Callamard – who investigated Khashoggi killing and called for the crown prince and other senior Saudi officials to be investigated – has dismissed Saudi Arabia’s secretive trial of 11 suspects as a sham. Only a few hearings have been held so far.

Callamard says more efforts should be made to isolate Riyadh diplomatically.

She has urged the CIA to declassify its files on the killing, and for the FBI to open a criminal investigation. Meanwhile, she urged the G20 group of rich countries to move their November 2020 meeting, which is scheduled to take place in Riyadh.

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