This is our position on Iran and on normalization, which is...

Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said that his country is not opposed to a possible return to the United States of America to the Iranian nuclear agreement, which Tehran signed with Western countries in 2015, and the current US administration withdrew from it in 2018.

The Saudi minister added – in an interview with the Italian newspaper “la Repubblica” – “We hope that all issues of concern to the Iranians will be confronted, chief among them the necessity to impose a permanent ban on uranium enrichment, and not to enable Iran to return to these activities in the past.” The first moment when a dispute appears between the contracting parties. ”

And he considered that the issue of inspections in Iranian facilities should also be addressed, “because there are secret military sites in which restrictions are imposed on inspectors, not to mention that the previous agreement did not address Iran’s regional hostile and expansionist activities,” as he put it.

On the normalization agreement between Israel on the one hand and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on the other hand, Faisal bin Farhan said, “We have always supported all forms of normalization, but for Saudi Arabia to join these agreements, we see that there is a need for an agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and we believe that this is a basic condition.” .

In response to a question about the assertion of some members of the US President-elect Joe Biden’s team that the case of the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has not ended, even after the issuance of judgments in Saudi Arabia against the perpetrators; The Saudi minister said, “We believe that we have identified the perpetrators and have been prosecuted. We have also taken the necessary steps to reform our security apparatus to ensure that such a terrible operation does not happen again. We are ready to inform the next US administration about the efforts that have been made in this regard.”

On the issue of Saudi women activists, some of whom say they have been subjected to torture and sexual extortion; Faisal bin Farhan denied that their detention was due to their calls for reforms, and said that some of these reforms had actually been implemented in Saudi Arabia.

He stressed that these activists are detained “because they are accused of committing serious crimes against Saudi national security, including transferring confidential documents and information to countries that are not allies of the Kingdom, which requires them to appear before the judiciary to respond to that,” he said.