Qatar recalls ambassador to Iran

Despite these provocations, Zarif said Iran has refused to retaliate or even downgrade diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia.

Crude oil prices spiked Monday amid the diplomatic backlash that resulted when the Saudi Embassy in Tehran was stormed by activists frustrated by Riyadh’s execution of prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

“For the past two-and-a-half years, Saudi Arabia has opposed Iran’s diplomacy”, he said at the press conference with Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Saudi Arabia was “moving against Iran’s efforts” by opposing Tehran’s nuclear deal signed with western countries and “taking measures against the Iranian people” by keeping oil prices low, he said.

“This trend of creating tension must stop”.

“Iran has called for Islamic unity in the face of Saudi sectarian hate-mongering”, Zarif wrote. But no matter how France has sought to mediate between the Arabs and the Persians, Paris lacks real opportunities for such a mediation.

Smoke rises as Iranian protesters set fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran, Jan. 3, 2016.

Meanwhile, Iran’s diplomats have withdrawn from Saudi Arabia in response to Riyadh’s decision to sever ties over an attack on its embassy in Tehran.

Qatar became the latest country to recall its ambassador to Iran, state news agency QNA said.

Already a number of countries clearly stated that the deterioration of relations between Tehran and Riyadh will negatively impact the entire region.

Until then, it was the Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias that had led the fight against Islamic State.

“He is urging calm”. Speaking with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif, Jaafari said the row could have “wide-ranging repercussions”.

Saudi Arabia and Iran are on opposing sides in some of the Middle East’s worst conflicts.

But he also accused the Saudis of trying to prevent or defeat the nuclear deal reached in July, of producing or mis-educating many “extremist perpetrators of acts of terror”, of supporting “extremist terrorists in Syria and elsewhere”, and waging a “senseless war” in Yemen. Zarif said that the rioting had had no official sanction.

Conversely, Iran has reason to use the diplomatic break to potentially grow its global standing, he says.

Relations between the longtime adversaries hit a fresh low Thursday when Iran accused Saudi warplanes of deliberately targeting its embassy in Sanaa, damaging the property and seriously wounding a security guard.

Iran and Saudi Arabia have been longstanding rivals in the region, and Iran has banned its citizens from traveling to Mecca before, most recently in 1987 after a clash between protesters and Saudi security forces in the city left hundreds dead.

Iraq, which has a Shia majority, shares borders with the Shia and Sunni powers.

Nimr was executed along with three other Shia convicted of terrorism offences in connection with the protests in Eastern Province, and 43 Sunni al-Qaeda militants.

He was arrested in 2012 after calling for two governorates to be separated from the kingdom.

Gulf countries, led by influential Opec kingpin Saudi Arabia, refuse to cut output unless the oil-producing states that are not members of the group agree to do the same.