It is relying on Iranian help and powerful Shiite militias to battle the extremist Islamic State group while trying to fix its own ties to oil-rich Saudi Arabia, which last week sent an ambassador to Baghdad for the first time in 25 years.
Advertisement
Saudi allies Bahrain and Sudan broke off diplomatic relations with Iran on Monday and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has also downgraded its diplomatic team in Tehran. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Reuters that air traffic and commercial relations with Iran were also being cut off.
The diplomatic standoff between Saudi Arabia and Iran began on Saturday, when the Sunni kingdom executed 47 people, including a popular Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.
“For the past two-and-a-half years, Saudi Arabia has opposed Iran’s diplomacy”, he said at the press conference with Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
Iraq offered Wednesday to mediate between Saudi Arabia and Iran in efforts to ease a standoff that threatens to expand sectarian fault lines across the region.
“This trend of creating tension must stop”.
“The oil price growth is not expected in the short term”, he said. In Iran, a Shiite majority country, protesters ransacked two Saudi missions-an embassy in the capital Tehran and a consulate in the northeastern city of Mashhad, the BBC reports.
Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran on Sunday.
According to Iranian state-run TV channels a number of embassy guards were injured in the alleged missile attack.
“If our partners Saudi Arabia and Iran show they are ready and willing [to meet], our initiative will remain on the table”, the source said.
The United Nations and Western governments have expressed deep concern, urging both sides to reduce tensions.
Saudi Arabia and Iran have been the crucial powers all along.
Iranian officials have brushed aside the dispute, with government spokesman Mohammad Bagher Nobakht saying Tuesday it “will have no impact on Iran’s national development”. Tehran is also reportedly backing the Houthis rebels in Yemen, while Saudi Arabia is leading a Sunni coalition in airstrikes seeking to restore control of the country for President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. Zarif said that the rioting had had no official sanction. He added, “If they do so, we will of course have normal relations with Iran”. Russian Federation has been equally quick with an offer to intercede, though it is hardly in a position to do so having made itself an ally of Iran in the Syrian war.
Instead, “it is Saudi Arabia that will suffer”, Nobakht said.
Advertisement
The claim, carried on Iranian state-run media, could not be independently verified.
