“This deliberate action by Saudi Arabia is a violation of all worldwide conventions that protect diplomatic missions”, foreign ministry spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari was quoted as saying by state television.
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The decision at a SAFF executive meeting Thursday comes days after individual clubs refused to travel to Iran for safety reasons when the competition kicks off next month.
Qatif is located near major oil facilities and many of its residents work for the state energy company, Saudi Aramco. A logical explanation is that it’s part of a well-thought-out strategy to whip up tensions so that the Al-Saud ruling family could tighten its grip on power at home and embolden its position in the region by amassing the support of the Sunni regimes. Like others Reuters spoke to in Qatif, he asked that his name be withheld. Riyadh, Bahrain and Sudan severed relations with Tehran while Kuwait recalled its ambassador. “All Iranian officials condemn it”, he said.
Qatif is nearly entirely populated by Shi’ites and can be physically isolated by the government. They are a small minority compared to a big majority. They were kept from the battlefield in Ramadi to reassure the Sunni population.
“Abadi needs all the allies he can get”, she said.
Those basic complaints have over the years been aggravated by what Qatif residents call a heavy security hand against their community, accusing the authorities of unfair detentions and punishments, shooting unarmed protesters and torturing suspects.
Zarif reiterated that the embassy’s ransacking had no official blessing. Riyadh was deeply concerned by the administration’s slavish pursuit not only of a nuclear deal with Tehran but of a new relationship with Iran that seemed to promise that country’s re-emergence as the regional hegemon. A similar faceoff is likely over Iraq, where Iran exercises growing influence over the Baghdad government and Saudi Arabia is prepared to back increasingly embittered Sunnis. On Wednesday, Iranian diplomats in Saudi Arabia returned to Tehran, according to state media.
But Iraq’s government defeated the Islamic State only with the help of Sunni tribes, which soothed local distrust of the Shia-led central government. Even when pre-revolutionary Iran and Saudi Arabia were the two pillars of the U.S.’s West Asia policy, Riyadh and Tehran were regional rivals.
Protesters in Iran responded to al-Nimr’s hanging by attacking and setting fire to Riyadh’s embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad. The violence was linked to the Saudi execution of an opposition Shiite cleric.
The police said Nimr was arrested when he fired on them with an assault rifle, injuring two, while trying to prevent the capture of another suspect, the act which most swayed judges to pass the death sentence on him, Alani said.
Iranian and Turkish demonstrators hold pictures of Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr as they protest outside the Saudi Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, Sunday, January 3, 2016, following Saudi Arabia’s execution of 47 prisoners in one day.
More young Shi’ites detained over the 2011 protests and subsequent attacks have been sentenced to execution. The real aim of the monarchy is to close down every window of dissidence; if that can’t be done through economic development and welfarism, do it by other means.
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“I think people are anxious. There is a feeling things might get complicated”, said a Shi’ite in Dammam, the capital of Eastern Province.
