Iranian president Hassan Rouhani condemned Saudi Arabia’s execution of al-Nimr, but also branded those who attacked the Saudi Embassy as “extremists”.
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Saudi Irabia Cuts Ties with Iran amid Row over Mass Execution
That attitude exemplifies how Saudi Arabia has taken a more aggressive stance ever since King Salmaan came into power past year . In Tehran the Saudi embassy was ransacked after protesters threw petrol bombs and stormed the building, destroying its interior.
On Monday, Bahrain also said it would sever its diplomatic ties to Iran.
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“I am deeply disturbed by the escalation in tensions in the last 24 hours in the Middle East”, Mr Ellwood said. All Saudi diplomatic personnel in Iran have been called home.
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The group, whose leader was killed in a Dec 26 air strike, said Iran was “threatening the security of the region by exporting criminal militias that spread destruction and death and filled with sectarian vengeance”. The cleric had railed against Saudi Arabia.
The Iranians did, however, appear to be taking steps to prevent the dispute from escalating further. Iran also has backed Shiite rebels in Yemen known as Houthis.
Bahrain’s decision comes amid heightened tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Arab News profiled the cleric, listing Al-Nimr’s crimes as “criticising Saudi authorities”, suggesting “secession of the Eastern Province if Shia rights were not respected” and “calling for protesters to resist security forces”. He was convicted of terrorism charges but denied advocating violence. We are determined not to let Iran mobilize or create or establish terrorist cells in our country or in the countries of our allies. Iran says at least 464 of its pilgrims were killed and blames Saudi Arabia’s “incompetence” for the deaths.
Kirby said Washington had previously expressed its concern about the legal system in Saudi Arabia and that it addressed those concerns at high levels with the Saudi government. Forty people were arrested and investigators were pursuing other suspects, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi said, according to the semi-official ISNA news agency.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards had promised “harsh revenge” against the Saudi Sunni royal dynasty for Saturday’s execution of Nimr. And now Saudi Arabia announced it has cut ties with Iran.
Bahrain frequently accuses Iran of being behind the long-running, low-level insurgency in the country since its majority Shiite population began protests in 2011 against Bahrain’s Sunni rulers.
A unnamed diplomat quoted by Russian state media said Moscow was ready to act as a peacemaker between the two countries.
The agency did not identify the Russian diplomat and it was unclear from the report if Moscow had made the mediation proposal to either side.
In an announcement on live television, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir also announced that Saudi diplomats in Iran had been evacuated and were on their way back to the Kingdom.
The hundreds of protesters outside the embassy denouncing Nimr’s death and angrily chanted slogans urging the closure of the “Wahhabi embassy”, referring to Saudi Arabia’s embrace of the hard-line form of Sunni Islam called Wahhabism. The govenrment was criticised consistently and in a sustained way and quite heavily by its own citizens until the launch of the Yemen war for not doing enough to push back Iranian and Shia influence, and the two things get conflated.
It was largest mass execution carried out by the kingdom in three and a half decades.
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Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah movement, accused Saudi Arabia of seeking to ignite a civil war in the region and warned that the blood of Sheikh Al-Nimr would “plague the Al-Saud [ruling family] until the Day of Judgement”.
