Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Monday accused Saudi Arabia of “murder” over the deaths of almost 2,300 pilgrims, including hundreds of Iranians, in a stampede during last year’s pilgrimage.
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Saudi Crown Prince and Interior Minister Muhammad bin Nayef said Monday that the Saudi authorities would not allow any “violations” during the pilgrimage.
The deaths triggered months of lingering animosity between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Iran, Saudi Arabia’s regional rival, blamed the disaster on organisers’ incompetence straining worldwide relations.
Muslim pilgrims circle the Kaaba, Islam’s holiest shrine, at the Grand Mosque in the Muslim holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on September 7.
He went on to assert that the Saudi authorities were extending all facilities to Iranian nationals who wished to perform the pilgrimage.
The grand mufti pointed to the pre-Islamic history of what’s now Iran, where the bulk of population were once fire-worshiping Zoroastrians, and suggested that this ancient legacy still shadowed the present.
A bitter war of words between Iran and Saudi Arabia intensified Wednesday ahead of the annual hajj pilgrimage from which Iranians have been excluded for the first time in decades.
Riyadh-Tehran ties were severed for 4 years after more than 400 people were killed in Mecca during clashes between Iranian pilgrims staging an anti-US protest and Saudi security forces in 1987.
“All those who try to disrupt Saudi Arabia’s services to the Hajj, pilgrims and those going to the two Holy Mosques will not achieve their goal”, he continued.
Tehran has said 464 of the dead were Iranian, and blamed the catastrophe on Saudi mismanagement.
“This is a place where other pilgrims need serenity.to feel at peace”, he said, adding that citizens of more than 50 nations participate in the Hajj each year and keep politics out of it.
Iran, the promoter of Shia Islam, has openly engaged in the regional conflicts, mainly in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and has been accused of fueling sectarianism to destabilize the Middle East.
Referring to the Iranian leadership, the English-language Arab News website quoted him as saying: “We have to understand that they are not Muslims”.
Khamenei also criticized the Saudi response following last year’s stampede in Mecca that killed hundreds of pilgrims, including 460 Iranians.
He denounced the fact that many of Mina martyrs have not been delivered to their respective countries though Iran took serious measures in this regard; “several agents and organizations, in line with guidelines of the Leader, managed to successfully identify and bring back home corpses of all Iranian pilgrims”.
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Corrections & Amplifications: Saudi Arabia’s execution of prominent Shiite cleric and activist Nemer al-Nemer sparked protests at Saudi diplomatic compounds in Iran.
