'No obstacles' to restoring ties with Saudi Arabia, ballistic program non-negotiable, tells Iran’s new president

"There is no obstacle for Iran to open an embassy and for normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia," Ebrahim Raisi told a news conference after winning the election.

Iran's newly elected president has said he is not ready to discuss support for Tehran's ballistic missile program or regional militias.

When he was asked about his involvement in the mass executions of about 5,000 people in 1988, he described himself as a "defender of human rights."

Iran's newly elected president was part of a "death panel" that sentenced political prisoners to death at the end of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

Raisi says his country's foreign policy will not be limited to the 2015 nuclear deal. "We will talk to the world."

"We will not tie the interests of the Iranian people to the nuclear deal," he added.

In his first news conference since his victory in Friday’s election, he said the United States was committed to lifting sanctions on Iran.

The victory of Ebrahim Raisi comes amid the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history. Millions of Iranians stayed home in defiance of a vote they saw as tipped in Raisi’s favour.

Of those who did vote, 3.7 million people either accidentally or intentionally voided their ballots, far beyond the amount seen in previous elections and suggesting some wanted none of the four candidates. In official results, Raisi won 17.9 million votes overall, nearly 62 per cent of the total 28.9 million cast.

Earlier, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said he’s ready to re-establish formal diplomatic links with Saudi Arabia and reinstate an ambassador to the Sunni kingdom.

“I’m ready to send an ambassador to Saudi Arabia tomorrow, but it depends on them,” Zarif said during the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, according to a live stream of the event online.

“There’s no reason that we should not be able to resolve our differences with the Saudis.”

Saudi Arabia officially cut all diplomatic ties with Iran in 2016 after protesters attacked its embassy in Tehran and set it on fire in response to the kingdom’s execution of a revered Shiite cleric.