Kamal Kharrazi, a foreign policy advisor to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has left Tehran for Doha to attend an Iranian-Arab dialogue conference in Qatar.
A member of Kharrazi's delegation Hossein Jaberi-Ansari announced the news on Saturday, expressing hope that talks can take place that would enhance regional cooperation.
Semi-official ISNA news agency reported that this round of talks will be held with the joint initiative of the Strategic Council of Foreign Relations of Iran and Al Jazeera Studies Center.
Kamal Kharazi, Head of the Strategic Council of Foreign Relations, will be the opening speaker of the conference.
The focus of this round of talks is on economic security and examining solutions and approaches to resolve crises, according to ISNA.
Qatar has good ties with Iran, with which it shares a giant gas field in the Persian Gulf. Tehran supported Doha after Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies imposed a boycott on Qatar in mid-2017 in a dispute over its ties with Islamist groups and with non-Arab Turkey and Iran.
Qatar's emir said last year that his US-allied country was ready to do what it can to help bring a solution between Iran and the major parties at talks in Vienna to salvage the nuclear deal, which Washington pulled out of in 2018.
Reports in January 2022 spoke of Qatar acting as a mediator to arrange direct talks between Tehran and Washington. But Iran rejected negotiating directly with the US.
Talks to revive the JCPOA reached a deadlock last September after 18 months of negotiations.
US officials have repeatedly said that their focus is not on the JCPOA negotiations any longer, but Washington is rather focused on the Islamic Republic’s suppression of its people and Tehran’s military support for Russia in the invasion of Ukraine.