Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has lashed out at Saudi rulers over Mina stampede that claimed hundreds of lives previous year during Hajj ritual.
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In response, Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Sheikh said he was not surprised at Khamenei’s comments.
For the first time in nearly three decades Iranians will not join the pilgrimage after talks between Tehran and Riyadh on logistics and security fell apart in May.
Regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran have had an unusually harsh exchange in the lead up to the annual haj pilgrimage in Mecca.
“Saudi rulers. who have blocked the proud and faithful Iranian pilgrims’ path to the Beloved’s House, are disgraced and misguided people who think their survival on the throne of oppression is dependent on defending the arrogant powers of the world, on alliances with Zionism and the US”, Khamenei said in a statement posted on his official website on Tuesday.
“Accursed tree of tyrants should be stripped of Hajj duties”, the Leader said, wondering: ” if Al Saud were not to blame in Mina incident, then why they denied access of an independent inquiry?
“Unfortunately, this government by committing crimes in the region and supporting terrorism in fact shed the blood of Muslims in Iraq, Syria and Yemen”, he added.
He described Iranian leaders as sons of “magus”, a reference to Zoroastrianism, the dominant belief in Persia until the Muslim Arab invasion of the region that is now Iran 13 centuries ago.
On Monday night, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif joined the fray on Twitter.
He said the Iranian authorities were not interested in whether their own pilgrims attended Hajj or not.
Jane Kinninmont, deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa programme at the Chatham House think tank in London, said the world needed to pay more attention to the “cold conflict” between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia says Tehran made “unacceptable” demands, including the right to organise demonstrations “that would cause chaos”.
Even Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani and the rest of the political camp of Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who advocates better relations with the Saudis, has said that the Saudi government should be punished for Mina.
The Secretary-General also stressed that the GCC countries reject the unjust media campaign and successive statements by senior Iranian officials against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the GCC states.
Mina, where pilgrims partake in the “stoning of the devil” ceremony, has always been notorious for stampedes due to the volume of visitors: incidents in 2006, 2004 and 2001 killed a total of 712 people.
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The official Saudi toll of 769 people killed and 934 injured has not changed in almost a year.
