NEW YORK: The relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia deserves to be better, though differences between the two oil-producing countries appear to be narrowing, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday.

Iran and Saudi Arabia are enmeshed in a struggle for influence across the Middle East and have supported opposing sides in wars and political disputes in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain and Yemen.

“Our relationship with Saudi Arabia ... deserves to be warmer,” Mr Rouhani told a group of senior editors in New York ahead of the annual gathering of world leaders at the UN General Assembly.

“Saudi Arabia’s positions are getting closer and closer to us.”

Speaking through an interpreter, Mr Rouhani added that if the two nations’ differences were truly narrowing, “relations with Saudi Arabia will grow closer”.

The Iranian president reacted cautiously to the US-led air strikes on Islamic State militants in Syria. He neither condemned nor endorsed the military action by the United States and Arab allies.

“The bombardment must have a certain framework that is needed to take place in a third country.” He said that without a UN mandate or a request from the government of the affected country, military interventions “don’t have any legal standing”.

Syria’s UN Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari said he was personally informed by US Ambassador Samantha Power of imminent US and Arab air strikes against Islamic State targets on Syrian territory hours ahead of time.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is a close ally of Iran, which has provided military support to his government during its ‘civil war’, now in its fourth year.

Mr Rouhani said he had no plans to meet US President Barack Obama while in New York for the UN General Assembly.

Published in Dawn, September 24th, 2014