DUBAI, November 6. /TASS/. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi will visit Saudi Arabia to take part in an extraordinary summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which will be held in Riyadh on November 12, the Iranian Etemad newspaper reported on Monday.

The OIC Secretariat called the leaders’ summit to discuss the current escalation in the zone of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The Iranian and Saudi foreign ministers, Hossein Amir Abdollahian and Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, held a telephone call ahead of the summit. The Iranian foreign ministry said after this call that the Iranian president was among the summit’s initiators.

Relations between Riyadh and Tehran became strained in March 2015 after a Saudi-led coalition launched a military operation in Yemen against the Ansar Allah (Houthi) movement. Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic relations with Iran in January 2016 after its embassy in Tehran and a consulate in Mashhad were attacked by crowds protesting against the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent Shia cleric, in Riyadh.

On March 10, Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to normalize bilateral relations and open embassies within two months. Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran Ali Shamkhani and Minister of State, National Security Advisor of Saudi Arabia Musaad bin Mohammed Al Aiban held talks in Beijing for several days, after which a trilateral statement was adopted.