Saudi Arabia has given Iranian diplomats 48 hours to leave the country, amid a row over the Saudi execution of a top Shia Muslim cleric. The Saudi government announced on Sunday that it had broken off diplomatic ties with Iran. Iran has accused Saudi Arabia of stoking tension in the region.
Saudi Arabia and Iran are the major Sunni and Shia powers in the region respectively and back opposing sides in the conflicts in Syria and Yemen.
The US has appealed for calm, calling for continued diplomatic engagement.
Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and 46 others were executed on Saturday after being convicted of terror-related offences.
Late on Sunday, police came under heavy gunfire in his home town of Awamiya in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, leaving one civilian dead and a child injured, the Saudi Press Agency said.
Security forces are still hunting the attackers, calling the incident a “terrorist” act, a police spokesman was quoted as saying.
Shia Muslims have complained of marginalisation in Eastern Province.
‘Interference’
Saudi Arabia announced that it would sever diplomatic relations with Iran after demonstrators stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran. It has also recalled its diplomats from Tehran.
A diplomatic rupture between the major Sunni and Shia powers in the region will resonate across the Middle East, where they back opposing sides in many destructive wars and simmering conflicts.
Players are already lining up along sectarian lines to support either Tehran or Riyadh.
Last year had ended with a bit of hope that talks on ending Yemen’s strife had, at least, begun. Syria was to follow this month. It looks an awful lot harder now.
In October Saudi sources told me they only dropped their opposition to Iran’s presence at Syria talks after the US persuaded them to test Tehran’s commitment. But they doubt Iran will do a deal, and see it as key source of regional instability.
On the other side, Iranian officials don’t hide their contempt for the Saudi system and its support for Islamist groups. There’s been barely-concealed anger for months. Now it’s boiled over.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said Saudi Arabia would not let Iran undermine its security, accusing it of having “distributed weapons and planted terrorist cells in the region”.
“Iran’s history is full of negative interference and hostility in Arab issues, and it is always accompanied by destruction,” he told a news conference.
US state department spokesman John Kirby said: “We will continue to urge leaders across the region to take affirmative steps to calm tensions”.
“We believe that diplomatic engagement and direct conversations remain essential,” he said.
‘Martyr’
Earlier, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that the Sunni Muslim kingdom would face “divine revenge” for the execution – an act which also angered Shia Muslims elsewhere in the Middle East.
Ayatollah Khamenei called Sheikh Nimr a “martyr” who had acted peacefully.
Protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran late on Saturday, setting fire to the building before being driven back by police. The Saudi foreign ministry said none of its diplomats had been harmed in the incident.
Iran on Monday accused Saudi Arabia of using the embassy incident to provoke further regional tension, Iranian state TV reported.
It quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying: “Saudi Arabia sees its life in pursuit of crises and confrontations and attempts to resolve all of its internal problems by exporting them to the outside.”
Relations between the countries have been strained over various issues in recent decades, including Iran’s nuclear programme and deaths of Iranians at the Hajj pilgrimage in 1987 and again in 2015.
Diplomatic ties were severed between 1988 and 1991.
Most of the 47 people executed by Saudi Arabia were Sunnis convicted of involvement in al-Qaeda-linked terror attacks over the last decade.
Sheikh Nimr was involved in anti-government protests that erupted in Saudi Arabia in the wake of the Arab Spring, up to his arrest in 2012.
The execution also sparked protests in Iraq, Bahrain and several other countries.
BBC
UM– USEKE.RW
