Iran to appoint new envoy to Saudi Arabia – report

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Oct. 08 – Iran’s Foreign Ministry will soon appoint a new ambassador to Saudi Arabia, state media reported on Sunday. Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Oct. 08 – Iran’s Foreign Ministry will soon appoint a new ambassador to Saudi Arabia, state media reported on Sunday.

Iran’s current ambassador to Senegal Mohammad Hosseini will be appointed as the top envoy to Riyadh, the government-owned news agency Fars quoted an “informed source” as saying.

Hosseini will replace Hossein Sadeqi, Iran’s incumbent envoy to the Saudi kingdom.

The report also said that Iran’s former Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi would soon replace Mohammad-Ali Hadi as Iran’s ambassador to the United Arab Emirates.

As part of a purge of the Islamic Republic’s diplomats who did not belong to the ultra-Islamist faction, in October 2005 hard-line Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered the recalling of 40 of the country’s ambassadors, nearly half of the fleet. These included Iranian ambassadors in European countries, who were involved in Tehran’s nuclear negotiations with the West.