An Iranian delegation arrived Wednesday in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to pave the way for the reopening of Iranian representations, following a similar visit to Riyadh, following an agreement brokered by China last month, according to the official IRNA news agency.

"The Iranian delegation arrived in Riyadh on Wednesday to visit and reopen the embassy and consulate in line with the recent agreement between the two countries," the agency said.

It is the first official visit by Iranian officials to Saudi Arabia since the visit of officials of the Iranian Hajj Agency to the Kingdom in December 2019, a Saudi official told AFP.

The Iranian visit comes after the visit of a similar Saudi delegation to Tehran on Saturday to discuss mechanisms for reopening the Kingdom's representations in the Islamic Republic, and after the meeting of the foreign ministers of the two countries last Thursday in Beijing.

It also comes amid accelerated diplomatic moves that fall within the framework of the normalization of relations between the two most important regional powers in the Gulf, according to the sudden announcement of an agreement to resume relations between the two countries under Chinese auspices last month.

On March 10, Tehran and Riyadh announced that they had reached the agreement after a seven-year estrangement, following the attack on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran over the execution of Saudi cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

Iran and Saudi Arabia, two regional rivals, have fought regional conflicts by proxy, most notably the war in Yemen, as well as in Iraq and Lebanon.

The two countries held a number of rounds of dialogue in Baghdad and the Sultanate of Oman before reaching an agreement in Beijing, which was negotiated over a period of five days between the Secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, and his Saudi counterpart, Massad bin Muhammad Al-Aiban.

It is expected that the next step in the path of restoring relations between the two countries will be the visit of Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi to Riyadh after receiving an invitation from Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz, as confirmed by Iranian officials, an invitation that Saudi Arabia has not yet confirmed.

It will be the first visit by an Iranian president to Riyadh since Mohammad Khatami's visit in 1999.

Countries in the region and beyond have hailed the Iran-Saudi Arabia agreement as a positive step towards stability that could pave the way for more regional diplomatic rapprochement.

Observers hope that the agreement will contribute to the calm in Yemen, where the two countries have been waging a proxy war since 2015. This may also apply to other countries such as Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, where Iran is more present than ever before.