Saudi Arabia’s Minister of State for Gulf affairs Thamer al-Sabhan has said Iran’s media propaganda arm is aiming to stop the recent rapprochement between Riyadh and Baghdad by spreading what he called fake news.

“Iran’s media engines began to move to try and stop the Saudi-Iraqi rapprochement by fabricating conversations and spreading fake news, some attributed to me,” al-Sabhan tweeted on Monday.

“These are their ways,” he added.

Sources have told Al Arabiya in August 2016 that Iraqi militias with ties to Iran planned to target the al-Sabhan, Saudi ambassador to Iraq at the time, through the members of “Mourtadha Abboud Ellami” group at the behest of “Abu Mahdi Al Mouhandis” and the leaders of “Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq” and especially the groups led by Akram al-Kaabi.

Sabhan’s statement came as Saudi Arabian Airlines will launch its first flight to Baghdad in 27 years on Monday. Flights between Iraq and Saudi Arabia were suspended in August 1990 after former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein ordered his troops into neighboring Kuwait.

source: Alarabiya