President Barack Obama and Iraq’s leader are discussing ways to prevent a diplomatic dust-up between Saudi Arabia and Iran from exacerbating ongoing sectarian conflict in Iraq.
Advertisement
Zarif said that from the first days of President Hassan Rouhani’s election in June 2013, both he and the president have sent public and private signals to Saudi Arabia “about our readiness to engage in dialogue and accommodation to promote regional stability and combat destabilizing extremist violence”.
Riyadh cut ties with Tehran in response and was joined by several of its Sunni Arab allies including Bahrain and Sudan.
Others shouted “death to America” and “death to Israel”, frequent rallying cries at demonstrations in Iran.
Such divisions are easier to aggravate because of the wider struggle between the kingdom and Iran, with many Saudis, and their government, seeing Tehran as using ties with Shi’ites across the Middle East to seek dominance and persecute Sunnis.
An all-out war between Saudi Arabia and Tehran is “something we do not foresee at all”, the Saudi deputy crown prince and defense minister has said.
Killing of the opposition figures in this country, especially the recent execution of top Shia cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr proved total lack of foresight among Saudi officials.
On Sunday Saudi Arabia severed relations with Iran and on Wednesday Iranian diplomats there returned to Tehran.
The official Qatar News Agency reported the move Wednesday in a brief dispatch. The cleric has been a vocal critic of Saudi Arabia’s ruling royal family for years, going as far as threatening Shi’ite secession in the minority’s eastern homeland in 2009.
Saudis say the rupture with Iran is the latest evidence that the new rulers are less hesitant to act than their predecessors.
Relations between the longtime adversaries hit a fresh low on Thursday, January 7, as Iran accused Saudi warplanes of deliberately targeting its embassy in Sanaa in raids that it said had damaged the property and wounded staff members.
Iran today warned Saudi Arabia to stop working against it as their diplomatic crisis intensified despite efforts to defuse a row that has raised fears of regional instability.
“It’s a Saudi citizen convicted of crimes in Saudi Arabia”. The sultanate has been a long-time mediator between Iran and the rest of the world and helped jumpstart negotiations for the nuclear deal with global powers reached previous year. Four of the men were from the Shia-majority Eastern Province, while the other 43 were accused of having links to al-Qaeda. It wasn’t a funeral, as the sheikh’s brother has said Saudi authorities had already buried his body in an undisclosed cemetery.
Advertisement
Answering a question about Iran being the biggest enemy of the House of Saud, the minister said: “We hope not”. The United Arab Emirates downgraded its diplomatic relationship, and Kuwait recalled its ambassador.
