Saudi Arabia’s top cleric heightened the Kingdom’s rhetoric against Iranians, saying they are “not Muslims,” a day after Iran’s supreme leader said Saudi authorities had “murdered” Muslim pilgrims who were injured during last year’s crush at the hajj pilgrimage.
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All Sunni Arab monarchies taking part in the Gulf Cooperation Council starting with Saudi Arabia accused Iran of attempting to “politicize” the Mecca pilgrimage, following a very disturbing and offensive exchange of words initiated by the Iranian government against Riyadh.
This year, for the first time in nearly three decades, Iranians will not join the annual pilgrimage to the holy places in Saudi Arabia after talks on logistics and security fell apart in May.
Khaled Batarfi, senior columnist with the Saudi Gazette, told Al Jazeera that the rebuke to Saudi Arabia over last year’s tragedy contrasted with Iran’s health minister, who said during a visit to the country at the time of the accident that Saudi authorities had provided all needed medical assistance and care to victims of the crush, including Iranian pilgrims.
Rouhani further lambasted Saudi authorities for their “tactlessness and ineptitude” in overseeing the Hajj pilgrimage past year, when thousands of Muslim pilgrims, including 465 Iranians, died in a human crush.
Saudi Arabia has led military operations, dubbed Storm Packets Process, against the Iran-backed Ansar Allah, known as the Houthis.
Iranian protesters hold portraits of prominent Shiite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr as they confront riot police during a demonstration against his execution by Saudi authorities on January 3, 2016, outside the Saudi embassy in Tehran.
Rouhani’s comments come just days after Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, criticized the Saudis as unbelievers and questioned the country’s role in administering the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.
He charged that Iran was making “efforts to politicise Hajj and convert it into an occasion to violate the teachings of Islam, through shouting slogans and disturbing the security of pilgrims”.
Negotiations between the two countries regarding security arrangements for this year’s Hajj collapsed in May, leading Iran to declare that it will not send its citizens on the pilgrimage that begins at the end of this week. Aldakhil makes this clear in sharing his opinion on why the Ayatollah has published such a state shortly before the hajj: “Its mullahs feel that Saudi Arabia carries religious and spiritual weight, which they hope to attain in the long run, but in the short term they wish to sabotage it…”
Deep suspicions exist between predominantly Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and its mainly Shia Muslim neighbour. Iranian pilgrims expressed their appreciation of the warm reception accorded to them since their arrival in the holy territories.
Last year’s nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, which unleashed Iran’s economy from years of ever-tightening economic sanctions, raised Saudi concerns that a richer Iran would seek to impose itself more in the region. The kingdom said 769 people were killed, though some estimates put the figure at more than 2,000.
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Iran had the highest of death toll of any country, with 464 Iranian pilgrims killed. The twin bombings killed one pilgrim and wounded a further 16.
