http://news.yahoo.com/iran-saudi-step-war-words-over-executed-shiite-074235479.html
QuoteSaudi Arabia announced Sunday it was severing diplomatic relations with Shiite powerhouse Iran amid escalating tensions over the Sunni kingdom's execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.
The move came hours after protesters stormed and set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and followed harsh criticism by Iran's top leader of the Saudis' execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said Iranian diplomatic personnel had 48 hours to leave his country and all Saudi diplomatic personnel in Iran had been called home.
The mass execution of al-Nimr and 46 others — the largest carried out by Saudi Arabia in three and a half decades — laid bare the sectarian divisions gripping the region as demonstrators took to the streets from Bahrain to Pakistan in protest.
It also illustrated the kingdom's new aggressiveness under King Salman. 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.
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned Saudi Arabia on Sunday of "divine revenge" over al-Nimr's death, while Riyadh accused Tehran of supporting "terrorism" in a war of words that threatened to escalate even as the U.S. and the European Union sought to calm the region.
Al-Jubeir told a news conference in Riyadh that the Iranian regime has "a long record of violations of foreign diplomatic missions," dating back to the occupation of the U.S. Embassy in 1979, and such incidents constitute "a flagrant violation of all international agreements," according to the official Saudi Press Agency.
He said Iran's "hostile policy" was aimed "at destabilizing the region's security," accusing Tehran of smuggling weapons and explosives and planting terrorist cells in the kingdom and other countries in the region. He vowed that Saudi Arabia will not allow Iran "to undermine our security."
"The history of Iran is full of negative and hostile interference in Arab countries, always accompanied with subversion, demolition and killing of innocent souls," al-Jubeir said, just before announcing the severing of diplomatic relations.
Al-Nimr was a central figure in Arab Spring-inspired protests by Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority until his arrest in 2012. He was convicted of terrorism charges but denied advocating violence.
On Saturday, Saudi Arabia put al-Nimr and three other Shiite dissidents to death, along with a number of al-Qaida militants. Al-Nimr's execution drew protests from Shiites around the world, who backed his call for reform and wider political freedom for their sect.
While the split between Sunnis and Shiites dates back to the early days of Islam and disagreements over the successor to Prophet Muhammad, those divisions have only grown as they intertwine with regional politics, with both Iran and Saudi Arabia vying to be the Mideast's top power.
Iran accuses Saudi Arabia of supporting terrorism in part because it backs Syrian rebel groups fighting to oust its embattled ally, President Bashar Assad. Riyadh points to Iran's backing of the Lebanese Hezbollah and other Shiite militant groups in the region as a sign of its support for terrorism. Iran also has backed Shiite rebels in Yemen known as Houthis.
Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader, condemned al-Nimr's execution, saying Sunday the cleric "neither invited people to take up arms nor hatched covert plots. The only thing he did was public criticism."
Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard said Saudi Arabia's "medieval act of savagery" would lead to the "downfall" of the country's monarchy.
Saudi Arabia's Foreign Ministry said that by condemning the execution, Iran had "revealed its true face represented in support for terrorism."
In Tehran, a protest outside the Saudi Embassy early Sunday quickly grew violent as protesters threw stones and gasoline bombs at the embassy, setting part of the building ablaze, according to Gen. Hossein Sajedinia, the country's top police official, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.
Forty people were arrested and investigators were pursuing other suspects, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi said, according to the semi-official ISNA news agency.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani condemned Saudi Arabia's execution of al-Nimr, but also branded those who attacked the Saudi Embassy as "extremists."
"It is unjustifiable," he said in a statement.
Hundreds of protesters later demonstrated in front of the embassy and in a central Tehran square, where street signs near the embassy were replaced with ones bearing the slain sheikh's name.
Western powers sought to calm the tensions.
In Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby said the Obama administration was aware of the Saudis' severing of ties with Tehran. "We believe that diplomatic engagement and direct conversations remain essential in working through differences and we will continue to urge leaders across the region to take affirmative steps to calm tensions," Kirby said.
Earlier, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini spoke to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif by phone and urged Tehran to "defuse the tensions and protect the Saudi diplomats," according to a statement.
The disruption in relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran may have implications for peace efforts in Syria. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and others spent significant time trying to bring the countries to the negotiating table and they both sat together at talks aimed at finding a diplomatic solution to the civil war. Last month, Saudi Arabia convened a meeting of Syrian opposition figures that was designed to create a delegation to attend peace talks with the Syrian government that are supposed to begin in mid-January.
Across the region, demonstrators took to the streets Sunday in protest over the execution of al-Nimr.
In Bahrain, police fired tear gas and birdshot at demonstrators on Sitra Island, south of the capital, Manama, wounding some. In al-Daih, west of the capital, Shiite protesters chanted against Saudi Arabia's ruling Al Saud family, as well as against Bahrain's ruling Al Khalifa family.
In Beirut, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called al-Nimr "the martyr, the holy warrior," while protests erupted from Turkey to India to Pakistan.
The cleric's execution has also threatened to complicate Saudi Arabia's relationship with the Shiite-led government in Iraq, where the Saudi Embassy is preparing to formally reopen for the first time in nearly 25 years. On Saturday there were calls for the embassy to be shut down again.
Meanwhile, al-Nimr's family prepared for three days of mourning at a mosque in al-Awamiya in the kingdom's al-Qatif region in predominantly Shiite eastern Saudi Arabia. The sheikh's brother, Mohammed al-Nimr, told The Associated Press that Saudi officials informed his family that the cleric had been buried in an undisclosed cemetery, a development that could lead to further protests.
Ugh...this will probably cause their proxy war in Syria to heat up.
Vipers fighting each other. :showoff:
Never thought I'd say that but of these two, I would probably be rooting for Iran.
I'm rooting for a protracted stalemate.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on January 04, 2016, 01:13:09 AM
Ugh...this will probably cause their proxy war in Syria to heat up.
You have the cause and effect mixed up. The proxy war has already heated up, the Saudis killed this cleric in retaliation.
Or maybe the Saudis wanted to make sure the peace-feelers sent out in Syria recently fail
Quote from: Tamas on January 04, 2016, 03:23:50 AM
Or maybe the Saudis wanted to make sure the peace-feelers sent out in Syria recently fail
That sounds likely and it will likely work. I'm sure it would've failed anyway but it never hurts to make sure.
So it seems other Saudi regimes are "downgrading" their relationships with Iran.
30 Years' War imminent?
Quote from: garbon on January 04, 2016, 02:21:52 PM
30 Years' War imminent?
I'd say it's been ongoing for the last 10 years already, ever since the fall of Saddam really. It's just getting warmer that's all.
I don't know. Hasn't it really just been proxy fighting?
30 Years' War was a proxy war between God and Satan.
Quote from: The Brain on January 04, 2016, 02:33:43 PM
30 Years' War was a proxy war between God and Satan.
So how do you explain France?
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 04, 2016, 02:58:02 PM
So how do you explain France?
God's true representative on Earth.
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 04, 2016, 02:58:02 PM
Quote from: The Brain on January 04, 2016, 02:33:43 PM
30 Years' War was a proxy war between God and Satan.
So how do you explain France?
I'm reading Gregory of Tours right now. I'll have to get back to you.
Oil ain't exactly rallying on the tension between the two. :hmm:
Quote from: PJL on January 04, 2016, 02:25:26 PM
Quote from: garbon on January 04, 2016, 02:21:52 PM
30 Years' War imminent?
I'd say it's been ongoing for the last 10 years already, ever since the fall of Saddam really. It's just getting warmer that's all.
more like 1400 years war. Sunni and Shia have been slaughtering each other since Ali (iirc)
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on January 04, 2016, 03:27:54 PM
more like 1400 years war. Sunni and Shia have been slaughtering each other since Ali (iirc)
Well that is different. Just like you do not date the actual 30 years war to Martin Luther.
Quote from: PJL on January 04, 2016, 02:25:26 PM
Quote from: garbon on January 04, 2016, 02:21:52 PM
30 Years' War imminent?
I'd say it's been ongoing for the last 10 years already, ever since the fall of Saddam really. It's just getting warmer that's all.
Nah, I'd say it began four years ago when open war broke out in Syria.
:o Who could have predicted all this!? :rolleyes:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/01/04/iran_and_saudi_arabia_tensions_could_derail_syria_talks.html
Quote
Iran and Saudi Arabia Hate Each Other More Than They Hate ISIS
By Joshua Keating
U.S. officials are worried about how this week's rising Saudi-Iranian tensions will impact the fight against ISIS and the tenuous Syrian peace process—and they should be. The only reason for any sort of optimism about the process to end the nearly 5-year-old conflict was that Saudi Arabia, the region's pre-eminent Sunni power and a major backer of the Syrian rebellions, and Iran, the region's pre-eminent Shiite power and a major backer of the Assad regime, had both agreed to come to the table. Now what?
U.N. peace talks bringing together Syria's warring parties are due to convene on Jan. 25. The killing of the leader of one of the largest Syrian rebel factions by either a Syrian or Russian airstrike last month had already threatened to derail the fragile process. With Riyadh and Tehran now at each other's throats, it will take a herculean diplomatic effort to get talks back on track.
From a U.S. perspective, the current round of tension looks stunningly unnecessary and shortsighted given the larger issues at stake in the region. According to leaked documents obtained by the Independent, Saudi Arabia executed prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr and 46 other people knowing full well that it would provoke angry protests abroad. Iran, for once, might have had international public opinion on its side, at least until hard-line protesters ransacked and burned the Saudi embassy in Tehran. As the Guardian's Saeed Kamali Dehghan writes, "This was the moment when Iran could have argued that Saudis were to blame for the growing sectarianism in the region, but instead it scored an own goal." Even Iran's ally Russia condemned the storming of the embassy, which is pretty rich given the attack on the Turkish embassy in Moscow just last month. The Sunni-led governments of Bahrain, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates have now all joined Saudi Arabia in taking diplomatic action against Iran.
In the wake of the November Paris attacks, the French scholar Olivier Roy warned in the New York Times that while the U.S. and European countries may view the Syrian conflict and the resulting rise of ISIS as the most pressing problem in the Middle East, "the main actors in the Middle East deem other enemies to be more important." As I wrote last month, there are a few cases where the threats and complications emanating from Syria have pressured rivals to overcome differences, but the region's two key rivals—Iran and Saudi Arabia—still view each other as a bigger threat than ISIS.
Saudi Arabia is concerned about both containing Iranian influence and tamping down domestic instability—hence the execution of Nimr and three other Shiites, along with 43 Sunni al-Qaida figures. The latter's inclusion was meant to send a signal to Sunnis that King Salman, not al-Qaida, can lead the fight against the Iranian-led Shiite encroachment. As Reuters put it, cutting diplomatic ties then "underlined an assertive new foreign policy to counter Tehran under King Salman's year-old monarchy."
Iranian conservatives, meanwhile, were already alarmed at the prospect of a peace process in Syria involving Saudi-backed rebels that could lead to the removal of pro-Iranian President Bashar al-Assad. The weekend's demonstration of defiance was probably deemed worth the risk of blowing up the peace process because conservatives are wary of the peace process to begin with.
The nationalist fervor unleashed on both sides may benefit both governments in the short term. Unfortunately the people of Syria—as well as Yemen, where Saudi Arabia just ended a short-lived cease-fire with the Shiite Houthi rebels—are sure to suffer as a result.
They can't hate each other that much if Saudi has an embassy in Tehran. :hmm:
I don't think the Saudis hate ISIS that much. They don't want them in Saudi Arabia, but they don't mind them in Iraq and Syria overly much.
You are wrong.
God is an American.
God was the first American. He was American even before there was an America.
No, God is a woman.
Quote from: garbon on January 05, 2016, 10:58:49 AM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 05, 2016, 08:47:55 AM
God is an American.
Yep
He was so occupied getting his tobacco plantation up and running in 1618 he accidentally let a massive war break out.
Right wingers wanted to see examples of muslims taking action against islamic extremists. Well here you go...
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 04, 2016, 11:38:55 PM
They can't hate each other that much if Saudi has an embassy in Tehran. :hmm:
They don't any more. See: the title to this thread.
I reject all Americans except one.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35251917
QuoteIran accuses Saudis of bombing embassy in Yemen
Iran has accused Saudi-led coalition warplanes of bombing its embassy in Yemen's capital Sanaa, state media say.
Broadcaster Irinn said missiles had struck the embassy, causing damage.
Sanaa residents said there were dozens of air strikes on Thursday morning by the coalition, which is battling the Houthi rebel movement.
Riyadh, which is embroiled in a diplomatic row with Iran over the execution of a Shia cleric, accuses Tehran of supporting the Houthis.
Quote from: alfred russel on January 05, 2016, 12:09:05 PM
Right wingers wanted to see examples of muslims taking action against islamic extremists. Well here you go...
:D
Quote from: Syt on January 07, 2016, 06:15:17 AM
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35251917 (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35251917)
QuoteIran accuses Saudis of bombing embassy in Yemen
Iran has accused Saudi-led coalition warplanes of bombing its embassy in Yemen's capital Sanaa, state media say.
Broadcaster Irinn said missiles had struck the embassy, causing damage.
Sanaa residents said there were dozens of air strikes on Thursday morning by the coalition, which is battling the Houthi rebel movement.
Riyadh, which is embroiled in a diplomatic row with Iran over the execution of a Shia cleric, accuses Tehran of supporting the Houthis.
Okay, that's unexpected.
Update:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35251917
QuoteIran embassy bombing: Saudis targeted Yemen site - Tehran
Iran has accused Saudi-led coalition warplanes of "deliberately" bombing its embassy in Yemen's capital, Sanaa.
State media quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying members of staff had been wounded in an air strike.
Sanaa residents reported dozens of air strikes on Thursday by the coalition, which is battling Houthi rebels.
However, residents and witnesses in Sanaa reported there was no damage to the embassy after the air strikes, Reuters and AP report.
An AP reporter at the site said the embassy was still standing and had no visible damage.
A coalition spokesman said the strikes had targeted rebel missile launchers, and that the rebels had used abandoned embassies for operations.
Saudi Arabia has become embroiled in a diplomatic row with Iran after a Shia cleric, Nimr al-Nimr, was executed by the Saudi authorities.
The government in Riyadh accuses Iran of supporting the Houthis militarily - a charge it denies.
FT reported today that there has been a big popular backlash against the embassy attack - i.e. people are blaming hardliners for vandalism and making Iran look bad.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on January 07, 2016, 11:20:42 AM
FT reported today that there has been a big popular backlash against the embassy attack - i.e. people are blaming hardliners for vandalism and making Iran look bad.
Heh, aren't embassy attacks traditional for Iran? ;)
http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/07/news/iran-saudi-arabia-trade-pilgrimages/
QuoteIran has banned all imports from Saudi Arabia and told Iranians they can't join pilgrimages to its holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
So no more pilgrimage for Iranians. Will this be a big thing?
Considering it's one of the Five Pillars, it should be pretty big for devout Muslims in Iran.
Huh...could the Saudis actually want to provoke the Iranians into war with them, banking on the fact that the Americans will have to slap them down? It would cause the price of oil to skyrocket.
Quote from: Solmyr on January 11, 2016, 06:05:47 AM
http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/07/news/iran-saudi-arabia-trade-pilgrimages/
QuoteIran has banned all imports from Saudi Arabia and told Iranians they can't join pilgrimages to its holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
So no more pilgrimage for Iranians. Will this be a big thing?
It's one of the things the Saudis promised never to do as custodians of the holy sites. It is an interesting escalation, but one that will almost certainly backfire as Muslims around the world see the Saudis politicizing the Haj.
How does it fall on the Saudis if Iran tells its people not to go on the hajj?
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 11, 2016, 08:09:34 AM
How does it fall on the Saudis if Iran tells its people not to go on the hajj?
I misread the report. It's the Iranians restricting themselves. So... never mind!