Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran early yesterday and Shia Muslim Iran’s top leader predicted “divine vengeance” for Saudi Arabia’s execution of a prominent Shia cleric.
Demonstrators protesting against the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr broke into the embassy building, smashed furniture and started fires before being ejected by police.
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani condemned the execution as “inhuman”, but also urged the prosecution of “extremist individuals” for attacking the embassy and the Saudi consulate in the northeastern city of Mashhad, state media reported.
Tehran’s police chief said an unspecified number of “unruly elements” were arrested for attacking the embassy. A prosecutor said 40 people were held.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, criticised Saudi Arabia for the second straight day over Nimr’s execution.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards had promised “harsh revenge” against the Saudi Sunni royal dynasty for the execution of Nimr, considered a terrorist by Riyadh but hailed in Iran as a hero of the rights of Saudi Arabia’s marginalised Shia minority.
Nimr, the most vocal critic of the dynasty among the Shia minority, had come to be seen as a leader of the sect’s younger activists, who had tired of the failure of older, more measured leaders to achieve equality with Sunnis.
His execution sparked angry protests in the Qatif region in eastern Saudi Arabia, where demonstrators denounced the ruling Al Saud dynasty, and in the nearby Gulf kingdom of Bahrain.
Although most of the 47 men killed in the kingdom’s biggest mass execution for decades were Sunnis convicted of al-Qaeda attacks in Saudi Arabia a decade ago, it was Nimr and three other Shias, all accused of involvement in shooting police, who attracted most attention in the region and beyond.
The move appeared to end any hopes that the appearance of a common enemy in the form of the Islamic State militant force would produce some rapprochement between the region’s leading Sunni and Shia Muslim powers, allied to opposing sides in wars currently raging in Syria and Yemen.
Saudi Arabia on Saturday summoned the Iranian ambassador to protest what it described as hostile remarks emerging from Tehran. On Sunday, the United Arab Emirates, a key ally of Saudi Arabia, also summoned the Iranian ambassador and handed him an official letter of protest, state news agency said.
Iraq also furious
In Iraq, whose Shia-led government is close to Iran, religious and political figures demanded that ties with Riyadh be severed, calling into question Saudi attempts to forge a regional alliance against Islamic State, which controls swaths of Iraq and Syria.
Iraq’s top Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani described the executions as an “unjust aggression.” The opinion of Sistani, based in the Shia holy city of Najaf south of Baghdad, carries weight with millions of Shias in Iraq and across the region, including in Saudi Arabia.
Despite the focus on Nimr, the executions seemed mostly aimed at discouraging jihadism in Saudi Arabia, where dozens have died in the past year in attacks by Sunni militants.
The ruling al-Saud family has grown increasingly worried as Middle East turmoil, especially in Syria and Iraq, has boosted Sunni jihadists seeking to bring it down.
But Saudi Arabia’s Western allies, many of whom supply it with arms, are growing concerned about its new assertiveness.
The US State Department said Nimr’s execution “risks exacerbating sectarian tensions at a time when they urgently need to be reduced.”