May 5 - Around 500 Umrah visas have been issued for Iranian pilgrims, said Saud Al-Sulimani, customer relations manager at Bab Al-Umrah, one of five Umrah service providers in Jeddah. He said the first batch of pilgrims should arrive in Makkah in a few days. This news is encouraging for Umrah service providers and related businesses who have been running into losses since pilgrims were Iran have not been coming for the last three months.
Iran's Sazman-e-Haj (Haj and Pilgrimage Organization) had announced in January when the new Umrah season was about to start that Iranian pilgrims would not be performing Umrah until further notice. Last year, 866,147 Iranians performed Umrah. The figure was almost a quarter of the total Umrah pilgrims from all over the world.
Meanwhile, Al-Sulimani said since the Iranian pilgrims are starting three months late, achieving last year's figure was not possible, and that up to 350,000 Iranian pilgrims should be expected by the end of the Umrah season in early Ramadan.