News of the execution of Nimr al-Nimr-a vocal critic of Saudi Arabia’s ruling royal family whose death sentence was carried out despite warnings from Tehran that the action would have repercussions-prompted demonstrators to attack, then set fire to, the Saudi Embassy in Tehran.
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Saudi Arabia announced on Saturday it had executed Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and 46 others on charges of terrorism.
“In order to cover up its crime of beheading a religious leader… the Saudi government has taken a weird measure and cut its political relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran”, President Rouhani said in a meeting with Danish Foreign Minister Kristian Jensen in Tehran on Tuesday.
Some of its allies among Sunni Arab states followed suit, with Bahrain and Sudan breaking off ties and the United Arab Emirates downgrading relations.
Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Civil Aviation on Monday halted all flights to and from Iran following Riyadh’s severing of diplomatic relations with Tehran, the authority said on its official Twitter account. Demonstrations against the al-Nimr execution and Saudi Arabia are also being called for in the predominantly Shiite southern cities on Monday.
Council members urged the sides to “maintain dialogue and take steps to reduce tensions in the region”. 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.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry expressed concern about the attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran and described the attacks as “unacceptable”.
There was even an opportunity for Beijing to bargain with the two countries on prices as Iran and Saudi Arabia sought support from China.
In his calls, which include conversations with the Saudi deputy crown prince and the Saudi and Iranian foreign ministers in the last 24 hours, Kerry has stressed the importance of pushing forward on a peace deal for Syria, his spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
In three days, relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran have gone from tense to disastrous – and that may reverberate across the Middle East and worldwide.
Around a third of Kuwait’s native population of 1.3 million is Shiite.
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Sami Aoun, a director of the Raoul Dandurand Chair of strategic and diplomatic studies for the Université du Québec à Montréal, said the violence and tough talk this week between the two countries are symptoms of a strained relationship that dates back several decades.
