BAHRAIN – The tiny, Shiite-majority island kingdom off the Saudi coast, which long has relied on Saudi Arabia for support of its Sunni rulers, was the first to cut ties with Iran.
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U.N. Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura is visiting Saudi Arabia and Tehran this week on a preplanned visit, while U.N. Yemen mediator, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, is to return to the region on Thursday, Dujarric said. Oil futures spiked briefly on Monday, Jan. 4, 2016, after the news that Saudi Arabia would cut diplomatic ties with Iran, a development that could be seen as a threat to oil supplies. In a letter to the council, the Saudi ambassador called on the council to “take all appropriate measures to ensure the inviolability of diplomatic facilities and the protection of all Saudi diplomats in Iran”.
Mohammed Nimr admitted that his brother had spoken against corruption and the Saudi ruling family, but denied he had advocated violence.
PRE-REVOLUTION: Iran had rocky relations with Saudi Arabia under the shah, but they improved toward the end of his reign in 1979. Until mid-2014, Khartoum and Tehran had close ties, signing a military co-operation agreement in 2008 and expanding an Iranian naval base in Port Sudan.
The execution last weekend of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a Shiite cleric and opposition figure in Saudi Arabia, has heightened the Saudi-Iran regional rivalry, threatening to derail already shaky peace efforts over the wars in Syria and Yemen.
“Criticism should not be responded to with beheading”, Rouhani, the leader of a country that is committing record executions of its own citizens, said.
Kuwait’s announcement, which was carried on the state-run Kuwait News Agency on Tuesday, did not elaborate or say how the Kuwait-Iran diplomatic ties would be affected. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini accused Saudi rulers of corruption and argued that the holy sites of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia shouldn’t be under a single country’s guardianship.
“Unfortunately, I think the repercussions of the Iranian-Saudi tension will increase, which will reflect on the Syrian crisis, because Syria has become a stage for regional conflicts”.
“Saudi Arabia sees not only its interests but also its existence in pursuing crises and confrontations and [it] attempts to resolve its internal problems by exporting them to the outside”, foreign ministry spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari said.
Iran has been a long-time supporter of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, while Saudi Arabia has provided the rebel factions fighting Assad with financial assistance and weapons.
He assured the members that the country will play a positive role in defusing tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Late Sunday, Saudi Arabia announced it was severing relations with Iran because of the assaults, giving Iranian diplomatic personnel 48 hours to leave.
He was arrested in 2012 after calling for two Saudi governorates to be separated from the kingdom.
On the domestic front, al-Nimr’s execution will galvanize Saudi Shiites, even those who did not support the cleric, according to Toby Matthiesen, senior research fellow at Oxford University and author of “The Other Saudis: Shiism, Dissent and Sectarianism”.
He describes Saudi Arabia as the “most homogenous” Sunni state, and Iran as the Shiite equivalent.
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Despite the Saudis’ ultimate reliance on U.S. security guarantees, the kingdom in the past year repeatedly has signaled a willingness to act independently of the USA on national security matters. It hardly needs more inflammatory language and action.
