Turkey slams media reports linking Erdogan to Saudi execution

Iranian protesters burned the Saudi embassy in Tehran in response. Those attacks came after Saudi Arabia executed al-Nimr on January 2.

Iranians held mass protests on Friday across the Islamic Republic, angered by Saudi Arabia’s execution of a Shiite cleric that has enflamed regional tensions between the Mideast rivals. “For sure we will not allow any such thing”.

In defending the sheikh’s execution, Prince Mohammed says: “The court did not, at all, make any distinction between whether or not a person is Shiite or Sunni”.

They also carried posters of the executed sheikh, Nimr al-Nimr.

The magazine said it conducted the interview on Monday.

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Adel Bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir discussed “common challenges” with Pakistani side during his one-day visit to the country.

The Horn of African nation becomes the latest country to cut off diplomatic relations after Djibouti which severed its relations with Iran on Wednesday while Qatar has recalled its ambassador from Tehran.

He also said that the crisis in Saudi Arabia-Iran relations negatively impacts on the Muslim countries in the region.

But it and the few other Saudi companies doing business in Iran faced increasing public pressure over the course of the week, as consumer and business groups called for boycotts of Iranian products.

Erdogan on Wednesday said that Nimr’s execution was an “internal legal matter” for Saudi Arabia, and ties between Ankara and Riyadh have improved in recent months.

Further ratcheting up tensions between the two Persian Gulf adversaries, Iran Thursday accused Saudi Arabia of deliberately carrying out an airstrike on its embassy in Yemen and wounding its staff at the site.

According to the Guardian, witnesses claim that the compound is still intact and Saudi officials have hit out at the charges saying they are “propaganda”.

The rebels have seized large parts of Yemen, including the capital. Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, is now held by Iranian-supported Houthi rebels, while Saudi Arabia supports the country’s internationally recognized government.

A Saudi-led coalition, which has been targeting Iranian-backed Shi’ite rebels in Yemen since March, said it was investigating Tehran’s claim. As Quartz has reported, it has become something of a “forgotten war”.

Chinese vice foreign minister Zhang Ming is already in the kingdom and will travel later to Iran, ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told reporters on Thursday.

On Tuesday, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said Riyadh can not hide the “crime” of killing a religious cleric by severing diplomatic ties with Tehran.