After spat, Saudi Arabia sending ambassador back to Lebanon

Saudi Arabia announced Thursday it would send its ambassador back to Lebanon after a diplomatic spat last year.

The state-run Saudi Press Agency reported that the kingdom made the decision after the "calls and appeals of the moderate national political forces in Lebanon." The kingdom also said Lebanon had agreed to "stop all political, military and security activities affecting" it and other Gulf Arab nations.

There was no immediate reaction from Beirut.

Saudi Arabia withdrew its ambassador in 2021 after the Lebanese information minister at the time described the war in Yemen as an aggression by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

A Saudi-led coalition has been battling Yemen's Houthi rebels there since March 2015.

The row was one of the worst rifts between Gulf Arab nations and Lebanon in years. Relations have been strained over growing Iranian influence in the small nation, where Saudi Arabia has traditionally been a powerful ally.

Last December, France's president and Saudi Arabia's crown prince held a joint phone call with Lebanon's prime minister during Emmanuel Macron's visit to the kingdom to try to ease tensions between Beirut and Riyadh.

But in January, the leader of Lebanon's Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, responded by accusing Riyadh of helping spread extremist Islamic ideology worldwide and taking the thousands of Lebanese who work in the oil-rich Persian Gulf region "hostage." Lebanon is struggling with an economic crisis that began in October 2019, rooted in decades of corruption and mismanagement. The meltdown has left three-quarters of the small Mediterranean country's population of 6 million people, including 1 million Syrian refugees, in poverty.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)