Djibouti cuts ties with Iran after attacks on Saudi missions

When asked what it would take for ties to be restored, Saudi UN Ambassador Abdallah Al-Mouallimi told reporters: “Very simple – Iran to cease and desist from interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, including our own”. He added Saudi Arabia’s move to sever diplomatic ties between the two countries would impair regional stability.

Saudi Arabia can not respond to criticism of its regime by cutting off heads, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday following Riyadh’s execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.

ISRAEL – Israel considers Iran to be its greatest regional threat because of its nuclear program, its arsenal of long-range missiles, its support of anti-Israel militant groups and its repeated threats to destroy it. While Israel has no direct ties to Saudi Arabia either, the countries have come closer because of a shared concern over Iran’s growing influence.

“Already both Bahrain and Sudan have cut off ties”. In response, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari says his country is committed to protecting diplomatic missions and reiterated that no Saudi diplomats were harmed during the attacks.

And he compared Riyadh’s “immature reaction” to the attacks with Iran’s “restraint” after 464 Iranian pilgrims died in a stampede at the hajj in Saudi Arabia in September. In its most recent human rights report, the State Department faulted Saudi Arabia for, among other things, “holding political prisoners; denial of due process; [and] arbitrary arrest and detention”.

David Cameron has postponed a planned visit to Saudi Arabia, but Downing Street claimed the delay was unrelated to the mass executions carried out by the Gulf State on Friday. By allowing a mob to ransack the Saudi embassy in Tehran, Iran failed in its obligation to protect foreign diplomatic missions.

“It’s not having an effect at the moment”, but “it’s something we’re tracking closely”, Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said of the escalating dispute between the Sunni Saudi kingdom and the Shia Iranians over the execution by the Saudis of a Shia cleric.

And then there’s the most severe Saudi-Iranian proxy conflict: the war in Syria, which sees Riyadh and Tehran supporting different sides in a seemingly intractable civil conflict that has killed around 250,000-300,000 people and displaced around 11m.

Instead, “it is Saudi Arabia that will suffer”, Nobakht said.

Western powers, many of which supply billions of dollars worth of weaponry to Gulf Arab powers, tried to tamp down the tensions with Iran but also deplored the executions, as human rights groups strongly criticized Saudi Arabia’s judicial process and protesters gathered outside Saudi embassies.

They “had no justification in accordance with religious teachings or the point of view of global rules”, and were “beneath the Iranian people”, he said.

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

That’s why the only real solution to this political crisis is in Iran’s hands.

Some were beheaded and others were executed by firing squad.