News reports said Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi diplomatic mission on Saturday to object Saudi Arabia’s execution of 47 individuals including a Saudi Shiite cleric Nimr Al-Nimr over terrorism charges.
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“The move comes after Iranian protesters attacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran, ransacking and setting fire to the building in retaliation for Saudi Arabia’s execution of a prominent Shiite cleric and 46 others on Saturday”, Business Insider’s Natasha Bertrand reports.
Saudi Arabia is Britain’s most important trade partner in the Middle East and was its biggest market for arms exports in 2014.
Abdollahian also said Saudi Arabia was “undermining the interests of its own people and the Muslim people of the region with its plot to bring down oil prices”, referencing crude prices that are near multi-year lows.
Following the incident, Saudi Arabia announced it cut diplomatic ties and air transportation links with Iran.
The Saudi civil aviation authority said that as part of the cut in ties all flights to and from Iran were being suspended.
The United States itself has no formal diplomatic relations with Iran, but has been developing a closer working relationship since signing a deal to limit Tehran’s nuclear ambitions in July a year ago.
“More recently, there have been direct concerns raised by USA officials to Saudi officials about the potential damaging consequences of following through on mass executions, in particular, the execution of al-Nimr, political opposition figure, but also the religious leader”, he said. According to United States officials, the two planned to murder Al-Jubeir at a restaurant with a bomb, after which they would make an attempt to detonate a bomb at the Saudi embassy and the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C.
Insisting Riyadh would react to “Iranian aggression”, he accused Tehran of dispatching fighters to Arab countries and plotting attacks inside the kingdom and its Gulf neighbours. What does this illustrate about the new king? Among them was Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, who, as my colleague Marina Koren reported, was sentenced to death in October 2014 after being convicted of sedition and other charges.
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There have been reports of unrest in the eastern Saudi Arabian governorate of Qatif, al-Nimr’s home region and a stronghold of the country’s restive Shiite minority. It offered no motive for the attack, nor for another it said saw a mob beat and briefly kidnap a man driving through the area.
