The government of Bahrain claimed that it arrested a terrorist cell with ties to Lebanese-based Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps that was plotting bomb attacks, though experts were skeptical of the report’s’ veracity.
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Iraq has undertaken a delicate balancing act amid the latest regional turmoil.
Alex Neve, the head of Amnesty International Canada, said Dion’s comment was, “a bit out of the ordinary in terms of how willing previous governments have been to speak out about human rights concerns in Saudi Arabia”.
“Saudi Arabia is responsible for the damage to the embassy building and the injury to some of its staff”, Hossein Jaber Ansari, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, was quoted as saying by state television news channel IRIB.
“Every time that there’s anything similar to what would be called human rights volitions by China or by Russian Federation or by one of these countries, the United States is immediately on the attack, but when Saudi Arabia continually violates human rights, they get a free pass”, Jones told Press TV on Tuesday.
Saudi Arabia has maintained it needs to keep production robust in order to satisfy an expected return of demand. Or is it an effort to affect what happens in Syria, where Iran has been one of Assad’s few notable allies and Saudi Arabia has given financial aid and weapons to rebels fighting him?
“These tensions have been exacerbated by the Saudis’ feeling that they can’t count on the U.S., that the Obama administration from the beginning has been determined to pivot away from the Middle East – and in the process turn things over to the Iranians”, says Heritage’s Mr. Phillips.
Earlier in the week, members of the Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran returned back to Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic ties with Iran on Sunday.
Somalia on Thursday cut diplomatic ties with Iran and ordered all Iranian diplomats and embassy staff out of the country within 72 hours.
“Further deepening of strategic relations with the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) countries would serve Canadian commercial and possibly security interests”, the memo states, pointing to Saudi Arabia as the leading player in the six-country bloc that includes the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar. It has long accused Iran of fueling the unrest and sponsoring attacks in the country, something the Islamic Republic has denied.
In eastern Saudi Arabia, the home of al-Nimr and much of the kingdom’s roughly 10 to 15 per cent Shiite population, three days of mourning over his death ended Wednesday night.
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Asked about the diplomatic post attacks, Mohammed al-Nimr said it was “not acceptable”. The Saudis will likely now try to create a bandaid approach for giving hajj visas or they will move to try and re-establish relations with Iran because they need an embassy and consulate to continue their current visa system. “About my brother, we were hoping to end it in a political way rather than in blood”.
