Despite Tehran’s reluctance, Abbas says he will visit ‘sister’ Iran

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Sunday he intends to make an official visit to “sister” nation Iran, Channel 2 reported, contradicting recent claims by an Iranian official that, despite numerous recent requests, the welcome mat in Tehran has been denied to the Palestinian leader.

Channel 2 said that Abbas revealed his intentions during an interview with a Polish reporter at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Abbas said that a date has not yet been set for the trip, but that its purpose was to strengthen ties with Iran, which he referred to as the neighbor and “sister” of the Palestinians.

Earlier this month Ahmad Majdalani, a member of the PLO Executive Committee who was visiting Iran at the time, said he had discussed arrangements for the Palestinian leader’s visit with Iranian officials.

He said the trip would likely take place within the next two months.

However, last week an assistant to the speaker of Iran’s parliament said that his country had rejected numerous requests by Abbas to visit the Islamic Republic.

“They’ve asked to visit Iran more than once and we’ve refused and have never yet said yes,” Hussein Sheikholeslam, an adviser to parliament speaker Ali Larijani on international affairs, told the Hamas daily al-Resalah.

The Palestinian Authority is attempting to strengthen its diplomatic relations with Iran, as ties between the Islamic Republic and the PA’s main Palestinian rival, Hamas, grow increasingly chilly.

Iran’s relations with the Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement have been traditionally frosty since the Palestinian leader renounced the armed resistance against Israel, which Iran supports both financially and ideologically.

In 2012, Abbas declined an invitation to visit Tehran by then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He later met with Ahmadinejad in Cairo in February 2013, thanking the Iranian president for supporting the Palestinians’ November 2012 UN statehood bid.

Since Hamas’s violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007, Iran has clearly favored Hamas over Fatah. However, it has gradually ceased its financial and military support for Hamas after the Palestinian Islamist movement abandoned its Damascus headquarters in early 2012 and reportedly endorsed a Saudi-led military operation against Shiite rebels in Yemen.

According to media reports, a planned visit by Hamas political leader Khaled Mashaal to Tehran was recently canceled by the Iranian government in protest against Hamas’s rapprochement with Saudi Arabia. Hamas, for its part, has rushed to deny reports of a crisis between the sides, claiming that ties with Iran are ongoing despite the cut in funding.