Pakistan disapproved on Monday a mob attack on Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Tehran, which sparked a diplomatic crisis between Iran and Arab countries, Dawn newspaper reported. Since then, Iranians have attacked several embassies in Tehran including those of Kuwait in 1987, Saudi Arabia in 1988, Denmark in 2006 and Britain in 2011.
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An angry mob broke into the embassy on Saturday night and set the mission on fire following protests against the Sunni-led kingdom’s execution of cleric Nimr al-Nimr, a fierce Shiite critic of Saudi policy.
He criticised attacks on Saudi missions in Iran and he also criticized Saudi Arabia’s execution of a Shia Muslim cleric, which triggered the dispute.
With Iranian diplomats arriving home after being told to leave Saudi Arabia, Iran’s foreign minister said on Wednesday that Riyadh must stop working against his country’s efforts.
Bahrain and Sudan have severed ties with Iran while the United Arab Emirates downgraded its ties with the country, further complicating the rift between Shias and Sunnis and the efforts to end the wars in Syria and Yemen. He favored elections as a means to reform Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states and denounced the Shiite-backed Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. It has previously condemned the storming of the missions and stepped up its protest by summoning the Iranian ambassador.
During his visit to Tehran in November, Putin said that Russia’s military strategy in Syria would have been impossible without Iran’s help.
The nuclear deal struck last July between Iran and five other world powers was seen as a diplomatic triumph by its authors but it was vehemently opposed by Israel.
“It is Saudi Arabia that will suffer”, he said.
The Kingdom will also cut off all commercial ties with Tehran.
Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, Second Deputy Premier and Minister of Defence, on Monday received a telephone call from United States Secretary of State John Kerry. He was among 47 people executed by the Saudi authorities on Saturday for terrorism offenses, sparking an escalation in tension between regional rivals which already support opposing sides in civil wars in both Syria and Yemen.
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“Turkey calls for abandoning the language of threats and a return to the language of diplomacy and asks that caution be used so that the tensions between the two countries does not negatively reflect on the region’s security, stability and peacefulness”, the ministry said on its website.
