Reacting to Khamenei’s statement, Al Sheikh said the accusations by Iran were “not surprising” because being descendents of Zoroastrians, Iranians were “not Muslims” and that their “enmity to Islam, especially the Sunnis, is very old”.
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The verbal sparring – ahead of the Hajj which this year starts on Saturday – follows months of tension between the Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia and its Shia regional rival Iran.
“Some experts maintain that the events were premeditated”, he writes, then becoming such an “expert”: “The heartless and murderous Saudis locked up the injured with the dead in containers- instead of providing medical treatment and helping them or at least quenching their thirst”. Zoroastrianism is a monotheistic religion predating Christianity and Islam and was the dominant religion in Persia before the Arab conquest.
Khamenei also blamed Saudi Arabia for an earlier crane collapse in Mecca that killed 111 people, and urged Muslims around the world to reconsider Saudi Arabia’s custodianship and management of Islam’s holiest sites in Mecca and Medina where the hajj is performed.
Khamenei published an extensive article Tuesday accusing Saudi Arabia of the “murder” of pilgrims in last year’s hajj, where a stampede resulted in the deaths of thousands. But the counts of fatalities by countries that repatriated bodies showed different numbers – over 2,000 people or more may have died in the crush, out of which more than 400 of them were Iranians.
Iran says it is not sending any pilgrims on this year’s hajj beginning September 10 after talks with Saudi officials about security failed.
At this year’s hajj, there will be no pilgrims from Iran, a first in nearly three decades.
“Except the Iranians. They insist year after year on doing that, and every time they do that.is a crisis happens, accidents happen”, he said.
Prince Mohammed reiterated those concerns and charged Iran of trying to politicise Hajj and convert it into an occasion to violate the teachings of Islam – through shouting slogans and disturbing the security of pilgrims.
“What Iranian media and some Iranian officials are raising is not objective and they know before anyone else that the kingdom has given the Iranian pilgrims what it gave others”, Prince Nayef said.
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Riyadh severed diplomatic relations with Tehran in January after protesters attacked its embassy and a consulate in Iran after the execution of a prominent Shia cleric in Saudi Arabia.
