Iran bans imports from Saudi Arabia, faces Saudi boycotts

In this January 4 photo, an Iranian woman holds up a poster showing Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent opposition Saudi Shiite cleric who was executed by Saudi Arabia.

Tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia have spiraled since the execution of a Shi’ite cleric in Saudi Arabia.

Iran also announced that a ban on Iranians travelling to the Saudi holy city of Mecca for the year-round minor pilgrimage, known as the umrah, would remain in place indefinitely. Saudi Arabia and its allies say al-Nimr was found guilty of terrorism charges, and that condemnations of the execution amount to meddling in Riyadh’s internal affairs. Condemning the move, protesters took to the streets in Iran, the biggest Shiite country, and attacked the Saudi embassy.

Iran said Thursday it would protest to the UN Security Council after it accused Saudi warplanes of deliberately bombing its embassy in the Yemeni capital Sanaa.

Iran denounced those attacks, but the repercussions quickly rippled across the region with Saudi allies Bahrain, Sudan and Djibouti also cutting diplomatic ties with Tehran.

“The coalition command confirmed that these (Iranian) allegations are false and void, stressing that it does not carry out any operations in the vicinity of the embassy or near it”, a statement on the state Saudi news agency SPA said late on Thursday.

The Associated Press reported that an AP correspondent in Sanaa could see no damage to the embassy.

At a press conference in the capital, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Riyadh must end prolonged efforts to confront Iran.

Back in Iraq, however, thousands of Iranian-backed Shiite militiamen marched in Baghdad and across the south to protest the execution of al-Nimr. It said the decision came during an emergency meeting of the Cabinet of President Hassan Rouhani.

A memorial service is underway for a Shiite sheikh executed by Saudi Arabia last weekend.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, Hossein Jaberi Ansari slammed the Saudi Government for the Yemen provocation. “They are reviewing a crime, and a procedure, and a trial, and a sentence and carrying out the sentence”.

Speaking to The Economist, Prince Mohammed defended al-Nimr’s execution. 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. Iran’s annual imports from Saudi Arabia total about $60 million a year and consisted mostly of packing materials and textiles.