Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a message published on Monday, criticized Saudi Arabia over how it runs the hajj after a crush previous year killed hundreds of pilgrims.
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The week began with a furious rebuke from Khamenei, published on his website, in which he accused the Saudi royals of “murder” over the deaths of almost 2,300 pilgrims, including hundreds of Iranians, in last year’s stampede.
The comments came after Saudi Arabia’s top cleric, Grand Mufti Abdulaziz al-Sheikh, said Iranians – who are predominantly Shi’a – were “not Muslims”.
After the tragic incident, Iran said Saudi Arabia must provide due security for all pilgrims, including the Iranians, while they are in that country in Hajj season but the Saudi rulers refused to guarantee the pilgrims safety and consequently, deprived Iranians from performing their annual Hajj rituals this year which is a legitimate right for any Muslim.
Further, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Wednesday that the “cursed, evil” Saudi ruling family did not deserve to manage Islam’s holiest sites.
A year after the worst hajj disaster in a generation, Saudi Arabia is issuing pilgrims with electronic bracelets and using more surveillance cameras to avoid a repeat of a crush that killed hundreds and damaged already strained ties with Iran.
“The government of Saudi Arabia must be held accountable for this incident”, President Hassan Rouhani told a weekly Cabinet meeting, according to the AP. While Iran as a sovereign country can make diplomatic errors, Saudi Arabia as the custodian of Kabaa cannot and must not reply in the like. Predating Christianity and Islam, Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion in Persia before the Muslim conquest.
A stampede previous year killed at least 2000, by all estimates except that of the Saudi government.
“Indeed, no resemblance between Islam of Iranians and most Muslims, and bigoted extremism that Wahhabi top cleric and Saudi terror masters preach”, Zarif tweeted late on September 6.
“Islamic Ummah [Arabic word for nation] was bereaved in Mina stampede and about 7,000 people were killed, but no country other than Iran reacted and they remained silent”, he noted.
Iran had the highest death toll of any country, with 464 Iranian pilgrims killed.
“We must understand they are not Muslims, for they are the descendants of Majuws” – a term for Zoroastrians – “and their enmity toward Muslims, especially the Sunnis, is very old”, he said.
The hajj is a religious pilgrimage to Islam’s most holy sites that every Muslim is obligated to undertake at least once in their lives.
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A former senior United States foreign policy official, John Hannah, last month cited Gulf sources in an article for Foreign Policy magazine, saying that “the Saudis did in fact go out of their way to make Iranian attendance hard”.
