RIYADH — Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi landed at King Khalid International Airport shortly after dawn on Saturday for two days of talks with Saudi counterparts on maritime and border confidence-building measures, the first publicly announced bilateral visit by an Iranian official to the kingdom since the April 15 ceasefire ended seven weeks of regional war.

The visit, agreed in principle during a 40-minute sideline encounter between Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi at the Marseille reconstruction conference on Wednesday, marks the most concrete bilateral step yet between the two regional rivals since the Islamabad framework took effect. Saudi state media broadcast brief footage of Takht-Ravanchi being received at the airport by Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Saud Al-Sati, with no formal arrival statement.

The Saudi foreign ministry, in a short release distributed by the official Saudi Press Agency, said the talks would address “maritime safety and navigation in the Persian Gulf and Sea of Oman, border incident protocols, and humanitarian channels including pilgrimage and family-visit access.” The release did not refer to nuclear or missile files, both of which remain on a separate multilateral track in Doha and Muscat.

A senior Iranian official, speaking to reporters on the tarmac on condition of anonymity because the official delegation script had not yet been released, said the deputy minister carried “an authorization to discuss, not to sign.” He added that Tehran’s priority during the visit was a maritime incident protocol that would govern interactions between Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps naval units and Royal Saudi Naval Forces patrols in the upper Gulf, where two near-miss encounters in late April briefly raised tensions during the prisoner exchange period.

Saudi officials, in a background briefing for foreign correspondents at the foreign ministry’s press center Saturday afternoon, framed the agenda more cautiously. “We are interested in mechanics, not symbolism,” said a senior Saudi official, who declined to be named in line with ministry rules. “If we can lower the probability that a misunderstanding at sea becomes a crisis at the political level, we will have done what this visit can usefully do.”

The visit unfolds against a broader regional choreography that has accelerated since the Marseille pledging conference closed on Thursday with $76.4 billion in announced commitments, just short of the $84 billion target. Saudi Arabia’s $15 billion package, conditioned on bilateral border and maritime confidence-building measures with Iran, is widely understood by Western diplomats to depend on tangible deliverables from the Riyadh track over the coming weeks.

“The Marseille number does not move without this room moving,” said Layla Hassan, a Beirut-based regional analyst at the Levant Policy Forum. “Riyadh attached its pledge to a political horizon, and Tehran sent the official who can write the technical annex. That is not yet a breakthrough, but it is the kind of meeting that, in the Gulf, has usually preceded one.”

The two delegations were expected to spend Saturday afternoon and most of Sunday in working sessions at the Saudi foreign ministry, with separate sub-groups on naval communications, border crossing protocols at Iran’s Iraq frontier where Iranian-aligned militias have operated, and a humanitarian channel covering Hajj logistics for the season beginning in late May. Saudi officials confirmed that an estimated 87,000 Iranian pilgrims had registered for this year’s pilgrimage, the first significant Iranian Hajj quota since 2024, and that visa processing would be discussed as part of the humanitarian basket.

Officials from Oman and Iraq, both of which have served as long-running interlocutors between Riyadh and Tehran, were briefed on the agenda but were not present at the talks. Omani Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi spoke by phone with both Araghchi and Prince Faisal on Friday evening, according to a statement from Muscat, and confirmed that the May 26-28 framework session on missile and drone restraint would proceed as planned regardless of the outcome in Riyadh.

The Trump administration, which has alternated between encouragement and skepticism of the Gulf-Iran bilateral track, was briefed on the visit in advance by the Saudi embassy in Washington, according to two officials familiar with the exchange. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, asked about the Riyadh meeting at a brief gaggle outside the State Department on Friday, said the United States “welcomes any direct conversation that lowers the temperature in the Gulf, provided it does not substitute for the verification work the IAEA is doing in Iran.” He declined to comment on the Saudi pledge architecture.

Israeli officials watched the visit warily. A spokesperson for Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, asked by reporters in Jerusalem whether Israel had been consulted, said the government had been “kept informed through appropriate channels” and would assess the talks “by their effect on the broader regional posture, not by their photographs.” Israeli media reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office had requested a readout from Washington following the visit’s conclusion.

Inside Iran, the visit drew measured coverage from state outlets but sharper criticism from hardline commentators in the Kayhan newspaper, which warned in a Saturday editorial that bilateral talks with Riyadh risked “trading the dignity of a wounded nation for the smiles of a king.” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who has staked political capital on the post-ceasefire diplomatic track, said in a televised cabinet meeting Saturday morning that the visit reflected “Iran’s strength, not its weakness,” and that Tehran would “negotiate from principle, not from need.”

A joint statement was not expected at the conclusion of the talks on Sunday evening. Saudi officials said any deliverables would be announced separately by each side, with a possible technical annex on naval communications to be finalized in the coming weeks if Sunday’s session produced agreed text. Diplomats said a follow-on meeting at the working level could be hosted in Muscat in late May, alongside the missile and drone framework session, to consolidate any progress.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, who chaired the Doha round earlier this month, welcomed the Riyadh visit in a statement from Islamabad and said the framework’s mediators stood ready to provide “technical and political support” as bilateral and multilateral tracks moved in parallel. He said his ministry would receive briefings from both capitals before the Muscat session convenes on May 26.

Markets reacted modestly to the visit’s opening, with Brent crude trading sideways near $91 a barrel on Friday’s close and Gulf equity indices closed for the weekend. Officials in Riyadh and Tehran said additional announcements, if any, would come at the conclusion of Sunday’s talks.