Iran is expanding its network of schools abroad with two new institutions in Iraq’s Kurdistan region and the reopening of a school in Saudi Arabia, the country’s education minister announced on Sunday.
Iran's semi-official ISNA cited education minister Alireza Kazemi as saying that Iranian school in Jeddah has reopened after years of closure.
The move, Kazemi said, has "increased Iran’s educational influence in the region."
Iran’s only school in Saudi Arabia was closed in 2016 after Iran withdrew its diplomatic staff from the kingdom.
At the time, Iranian reported that the school had 15 students and two Iranian teachers, who returned to Iran along with the diplomats after the ambassador left Saudi Arabia.
In January 2016, Saudi Arabia severed ties with Iran in 2016 following the storming of its embassy in Tehran during a dispute over Riyadh's execution of Shiite Muslim cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.
Nimr, who was one of the leaders of the Shiite protests in Saudi Arabia in 2011, had studied in Iran’s religious city of Qom.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei called the execution of Nimr "a political mistake and a great sin".
Tehran and Riyadh agreed to end their diplomatic rift and re-open embassies in a major deal facilitated by China in 2023.
Iran’s reopening of the school in Jeddah comes as Saudi Arabia plays a renewed intermediary role between Tehran and Washington, after President Masoud Pezeshkian asked Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to convey a message to the United States to help prepare the conditions for resuming nuclear talks.
In 2020, Iran’s state-run English-language newspaper Tehran Times reported that the education ministry was overseeing 95 Iranian schools in 43 countries. However, in 2022, Iranian media, citing the deputy head of the Centre for International Affairs and Overseas Schools, said the number of overseas schools had fallen by about half, without giving a new total.
