On Monday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei criticised Saudi Arabia over how it runs Hajj after a stampede previous year killed more than 750 people.
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Specifically, Ayatollah criticized Saudi Arabia about the stampede previous year, which resulted in the death of hundreds of pilgrims.
Reacting to Iran’s critic point, Saudi Arabia’s top cleric, Abdul Aziz Al Sheikh, has said Iranians are “not Muslims”.
Muslim pilgrims pray at Mount Al-Noor ahead of the annual haj pilgrimage in the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia on September 7.
Arab foreign ministers weighed in Thursday on a bitter dispute between Tehran and Riyadh over the hajj pilgrimage, after Iran’s supreme leader questioned Saudi Arabia’s management of Islam’s holiest site.
At least 2,297 pilgrims were killed in a stampede at the pilgrimage in 2015, with Iranians making up the bulk of the victims.
Past year more than two million Muslims from around the world made the journey to Mecca – Islam’s holiest place.
In January, relations were severed again after Iranian demonstrators torched Saudi Arabia’s embassy and a consulate following Saudi Arabia’s execution of a prominent Shia leader along with 47 “terrorists”.
It is not the first time Iran and Saudi Arabia have come to blows over the pilgrimage.
Shia Iran and Sunni-led Saudi Arabia – long considered regional arch-foes – have been in a row over the annual Hajj.
Sheikh said such efforts would fail “because all Muslims trust what the (Saudi) government is doing” in providing services for pilgrims and with its work to improve facilities at the holy sites. Khamenei considered the supporters of the Saudi regime as complicit in the Mina tragedy, adding “the shameless Saudi regime backed by the USA is standing flagrantly against Muslims and continues to shed innocent bloods in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Bahrain”. Iranian officials say 461 Iranians were killed.
Talks on the hajj between Saudi Arabia and Iran broke down earlier this year after Saudi Arabia executed a top Shiite cleric.
“We must understand they are not Muslims, for they are the descendants of Majuws” – a term for Zoroastrians – “and their enmity toward Muslims, especially the Sunnis, is very old”, he said. Counts of fatalities by countries that repatriated bodies showed that over 2,000 people may have died in the crush, more than 400 of them Iranians.
“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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On Monday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei said “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”. Iran blamed the 2015 disaster on organizers’ incompetence.
