The UK Government has expressed its “disappointment” at the mass executions carried out by Saudi Arabia which have triggered unrest in the region and led to a breakdown in diplomatic relations between Riyadh and Tehran.
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Saudi Arabia announces it is severing ties with Iran
On Sunday, hundreds of Iranians staged a rally outside the Saudi Embassy’s headquarters in Tehran to protest the execution. Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi Embassy in Tehran in retaliation to the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.
Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, made the announcement on Sunday while the foreign ministry announced that it would ask the Iranian diplomatic mission to leave the kingdom within 48 hours.
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Iranian security stand guard to protect Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Tehran, Iran, while a group of demonstrators gathered to protest execution of a Shiite cleric in Saudi Arabia, Sunday, Jan. 3.
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Late Sunday, Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Iran, and Matthiesen believes that the sheikh’s influence after death may be much greater than it was when he was alive.
Jubeir responded yesterday by saying: “Iran’s history is full of negative interference and hostility in Arab issues, and it is always accompanied by destruction”.
Some protesters threw stones and Molotov cocktails at the embassy, setting off a fire in part of the building, said the country’s top police official, Gen. Hossein Sajedinia, according to the semiofficial Tasnim news agency. He said Riyadh would not allow the Islamic republic to undermine the kingdom’s security.
When these young people joined the Arab Spring protests in Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia in 2011, Nimr became a leading figure.
However, in what appeared to be a move to calm tension, the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, said the attack on the Saudi embassy was unjustifiable, and urged capture of the perpetrators.
Saudi Arabia will face “divine revenge” for its execution of a prominent Shia cleric, Iran’s supreme leader has warned. Iraq’s foreign ministry also condemned Nimr’s execution, warning in a statement on Sunday that “it will not benefit stability in the region nor peace between the region’s peoples”.
Saudi Arabia fired back.
Saudi shiites protested al-Nimr’s arrest in 2012, and again protested when he was sentenced to death in 2014. During his reign, Saudi Arabia has led a coalition fighting Shiite rebels in Yemen and staunchly opposed regional Shiite power Iran, even as Tehran struck a nuclear deal with world powers.
The head of Lebanon’s Shiah Hezbollah movement allied to Iran, Hassan Nasrallah, accused Riyadh of seeking to spark a “conflict between Sunni and Shiah” Muslims.
Most of the 47 executed by Saudi Arabia were Sunnis convicted of involvement in al-Qaeda-linked terror attacks in the last ten years.
Shiites are a majority in neighboring Bahrain, a small island that’s home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet.
The Saudi foreign ministry summoned the Iranian ambassador in Riyadh on Saturday to protest at Tehran’s “aggressive” statement on the execution of Al Nimr.
“Under global human rights law, the death penalty may only be imposed, in countries that still have this form of punishment, if a strict set of substantive and procedural requirements are met”, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said.
On Baghdad’s Palestine Street, Iraqi cleric Ahmed al-Shahmani said: “The House of Saud has opened the gates of hell on its own regime”.
The BBC is reporting that one of 47 people executed by Saudi Arabia was convicted of the 2004 shooting that killed one of its cameramen and wounded a correspondent.
The storming of the embassy was widely condemned.
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The U.S. State Department said Nimr’s execution “risks exacerbating sectarian tensions at a time when they urgently need to be reduced”, a sentiment echoed by European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.
