Missiles fired by the Saudi Arabian-led coalition in Yemen have hit Iran’s embassy in the capital Sanaa, Iran claimed on Thursday.
Advertisement
“The intentional act of the Saudi government was a violation of all worldwide conventions and regulations about protecting the security and safety of diplomatic missions in all situations”, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hossein Jaber-Ansari said Thursday, according to IRNA.
The row between the two nations erupted on Saturday when news broke that the Sunni-majority Saudi kingdom had executed the prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.
Iraq’s foreign minister offered Wednesday to act as a mediator between its neighbors Iran and Saudi Arabia.
A coalition led by Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Muslim allies has been fighting the Shi’ite Houthi movement to repel what it sees as creeping influence by the group’s ally, Iran, Saudi Arabia’s bitter rival for influence across the Middle East.
Erdogan visited Saudi Arabia on December 29-31, holding talks on the Syrian crisis with Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the King of Saudi Arabia.
Somalia joins several countries in the region that cut ties with Iran amid a diplomatic standoff between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr was among 47 people charged with terror offences and killed, mostly by beheading, across the Saudi kingdom on 2 January.
Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic ties with Iran on Sunday.
“For the past 2¹/₂ years, Saudi Arabia has opposed Iran’s diplomacy”, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif charged at a news conference. The guards had previously issued harsh criticism against Saudi Arabia for its execution of Nimr.
In Washington, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the United States has received conflicting reports about the Iranian Embassy in Sanaa and was still collecting information to determine what, if anything, happened to the building.
Advertisement
She said in remarks to The Jordan Times that summoning Ambassador Mojtaba Ferdousi Pour to the ministry’s headquarters was meant to “present Jordan’s formal note of protest to the Iranian government on its interference in Arab states’ internal affairs”.
