USA calls for all sides in Middle East to calm tensions

His language pointed to the hard position facing the administration.

Several allies of Saudi Arabia followed the kingdom’s lead and on Monday scaled back diplomatic ties to Iran.

The UN Security Council on Monday “condemned in the strongest terms” the attacks against Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Tehran, and its Consulate General in Mashhad in Iran, which resulted in serious damage and intrusions into the diplomatic and consular premises. It was an act that appears bound to further inflame conflict between Shiites and Sunnis across the Middle East.

“It looks like an extremely irrational and ill-considered decision to do this”, said Christopher Davidson, a professor of Middle East politics at Durham University in Britain.

Jubeir, a former ambassador to Washington where the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2011 said he had been the target of an Iranian assassination plot, said the break in ties was a response to older problems as well as the embassy storming.

On Monday, Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation authority suspended all flights to and from Iran, saying the move was based on the kingdom’s cutting of diplomatic ties. The United Nations aims to hold talks on January 25 in Geneva.

Saudi Arabia severed ties with Iran citing the 1987 haj riots and attacks carried out by Iran on shipping in the Persian Gulf.

Saudi insists peace efforts should not be affected by the dispute but has criticised Iran’s contribution to the process.

DUBAI/WASHINGTON – US Secretary of State John Kerry called the Iranian and Saudi Arabian foreign ministers on Monday to urge calm after the breakdown of relations between Tehran and Riyadh. Assad is an Alawite, which is an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Oil prices are likely to remain about where they are until either production drops or the world economy perks up and drives demand higher.

“The cleric represents a more radical strain among Saudi Shiites, who feel the community’s established leaders have failed to make headway with ending what they see as systematic discrimination”, Reuters reported following Nimr’s arrest. According to analysts, at least part of the Saudi calculation is that it doesn’t want to help Iran, which is anticipating the lifting of worldwide sanctions that will allow it resume as a major player in the oil market.

The letter said that around 8,000 “peaceful protesters” had stood in front of the Saudi embassy in the Iranian capital but some of them “at around 11:00 p.m.” got out of control.

Slow growth means that the current oversupply of oil could be more stubborn than expected. That hasn’t happened, but the Saudis and the Iranians both export through the crowded waterways of the Gulf.

The UAE, a country of seven emirates, has a long trading history with Iran and is home to many ethnic Iranians.

This has prompted critics of the nuclear pact to renew their objections.

Domestic Politics: The Saudi and Iranian actions can also be viewed through the lens of their own domestic politics. This hasn’t seemed very often to actually involve fighting ISIS, which may very well be Saudi Arabia’s surrogate in Syria and Iraq.

In Iran, hardliners are preparing for parliamentary elections next month against moderates allied with President Hassan Rouhani.

Saudi Arabia is a key diplomatic and economic ally of Britain, though Middle East Minister Tobias Ellwood said Britain told the kingdom about its “disappointment at the mass executions”.

In this, I suspect, we are looking at circumstances not dissimilar in some ways to the great rivalry between Catholic Spain and newly Protestant England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, a situation with which many Canadians will be more familiar for historical cultural reasons.