Iran’s president said on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia can not “cover up” its crime of executing a leading Shiite cleric by severing diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic, even as the kingdom’s allies began limiting their links to his country.
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Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari proposed mediation during a news conference in Tehran, but also referred to the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr as a “crime”.
Saudi Arabia and its allies say al-Nimr was found guilty of terrorism charges, and that condemnations of the execution amount to meddling in Riyadh’s internal affairs.
Iraq has undertaken a delicate balancing act amid the latest regional turmoil.
ISRAEL – Israel considers Iran to be its greatest regional threat because of its nuclear program, its arsenal of long-range missiles, its support of anti-Israel militant groups and its repeated threats to destroy it. While Israel has no direct ties to Saudi Arabia either, the countries have come closer because of a shared concern over Iran’s growing influence.
The Saudis complain about Iran’s “meddling” in the region but when the Bahrainis complained to US Defence Secretary Robert Gates that the Shia uprising in 2011 was caused by Iran he told them that the real cause was their own treatment of the Shia. Today Sudan gave Iranian diplomats two weeks to get out.
Where do we go from here?
A spokeswoman for Cameron would not confirm that a trip to Saudi Arabia had been planned or delayed due to Nimr’s execution. “The process of provoking tension must be stopped”.
Earlier, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, expressing deep sorrow over al-Nimr’s death, criticized the protestors who stormed the Saudi embassy and consulate.
“Criticism should not be responded to with beheading”, President Rouhani said.
Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran have been battling each other for supremacy in the Middle East for decades – a reality that might make the weekend’s breaking-off of diplomatic relations between the two rivals seem like business as usual.
The United Nations Security Council has condemned “in the strongest terms” the attacks against the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and another Saudi diplomatic mission in Iran after the execution of the cleric infuriated protesters there.
The U.S. military braced Monday for possible fallout from the Iran-Saudi Arabia rift on the campaign against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, along with Oman and Qatar.
Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, has a Sunni-ruled monarchy but a Shiite majority. Other Sunni Gulf Arab states such as Kuwait, Qatar and Oman, did not take any immediate action. It has long accused Iran of fueling the unrest and sponsoring attacks in the country, something the Islamic Republic has denied.
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On Tuesday, Kuwait announced the recalling of its ambassador in a statement carried on the state-run Kuwait News Agency, without elaborating. The sultanate has been a long-time mediator between Iran and the rest of the world and helped jumpstart negotiations for the nuclear deal with global powers reached previous year. Mohammed al-Nimr, the sheikh’s brother, said people planned to hold a funeral Thursday for the cleric, though Saudi authorities already buried his corpses in an undisclosed cemetery.
