Iran accuses Saudi of air strike on Yemen embassy

Iran denounced those attacks, but the repercussions quickly rippled across the region and beyond with Saudi allies Bahrain, Djibouti, Somalia and Sudan following Riyadh’s example and cutting diplomatic ties with Tehran.

Jordan summoned Iran’s envoy in Amman to condemn the protesters’ attack, while Kuwait recalled its own ambassador to Teheran.

Longstanding frictions between the Middle East’s foremost Sunni and Shia Muslim powers exploded into a full-blown diplomatic crisis at the weekend when Riyadh executed Shia cleric and activist Nimr al-Nimr along with 46 others.

“We have always adopted a policy of interaction and dialogue”, Zarif said, reiterating that the Iranian government had condemned Saturday’s embassy attack as “not at all justified”.

Saudi jets have “deliberately” hit the Iranian embassy in Yemen in an air raid that wounded staff, Tehran has claimed today.

Oil prices have fallen by more than 60 percent since mid-2014 as OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia refuses to lower production in a bid to push competitors out of the market, hurting the income of other producers, including Iran.

The deputy head of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards told Saudi Arabia on Thursday it would “collapse” in coming years if it kept pursuing what he called its sectarian policies in the region.

The Egyptian diplomat also reaffirmed his country’s support for Saudi Arabia ahead of an upcoming meeting of Foreign Ministers at the Arab League that is due to discuss the Iran-Saudi spat.

“We will inform the Security Council of the details of this attack within several hours”, he said.

Although an Associated Press reporter in Sanaa said he saw no damage to the Iranian embassy there on Thursday, the provocation of a nearby strike was enough to prompt further retaliation from the Iranian government.

Pakistan, which is a predominantly Sunni Muslim state but has a large Shiite minority, has expressed hope that Saudi Arabia and Iran will be able to normalize their relations.

Qatar has had troubled relations with Saudi Arabia in the past, but ties have improved in recent years, and both countries are leading backers of the Syrian rebels fighting to oust President Bashar Assad.

About 2,000 members and supporters of powerful Iraqi Shiite militias demonstrated in Baghdad Wednesday against Nimr’s execution.

U.S. officials have privately acknowledged that Saudi Arabia’s mass executions and other human rights abuses, including reported widespread civilian casualties from its military intervention in Yemen, have raised hard diplomatic issues.