Al-Qaida leader threatens Saudi Arabia over mass execution

They’re trading accusations over the war in Yemen, where a Saudi-led intervention hasn’t uprooted the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

The Saudis have problems at home, too.

Iran on its part is equally notorious for its regular executions of political opponents since the country’s 1979 revolution. In the past, Pakistan’s foreign policy choices have directly resulted in the proliferation of sectarian tensions in the country.

Cameron also admitted that he personally had not intervened in the widely publicised case of 17-year-old Ali Mohammed al-Nimr (nephew of Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr), arrested during the Arab Spring protests three years ago and who faces execution.

Echoing Saudi and Israeli concerns, Republican lawmakers say they’re unsettled by the warming ties.

On New Year’s Day, the government abruptly announced the execution of 47 domestic prisoners.

It defends its execution of shiite cleric Nimr al Nimr as the work of an independent judiciary. Nimr’s crime was not terrorism, but sedition.

Sharing their assessment of the situation, FO officials said there was also no immediate threat of the situation degenerating into an armed conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

In this May 30, 2015 file photo, religious flags, photographs and tributes to 21 victims of a suicide bombing, claimed by the Islamic State group, of a Shiite mosque are seen attached to their graves at a cemetery in Qudeeh, Saudi Arabia. That’s not what happened this time.

In December, Iran fired rockets that passed within 1,500 yards of an American aircraft carrier in the Straits of Hormuz, an act described as “highly provocative” by the USA military.

Although it was Riyadh that provoked outrage in Tehran by executing prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr and then severed ties after protesters set Saudi embassy on fire, the oil kingdom appears oblivious to the fact that the Islamic Republic is better suited to handle the cold spell in bilateral relations. “When I read the Iranian foreign minister’s article in the New York Times, I thought the author was the foreign minister of a Scandinavian country”, he tweeted in Arabic to 2.5 million followers, signing off with an grinning emoji. “It’s been an impossible relationship in value terms from the beginning”. This is quite an achievement considering the two countries’ hostility toward each other for the past 35 years. Bahrain, which is ruled by a Sunni royal family and has a close relationship with Saudi Arabia; Sudan, where Sunnis make up a large majority of the population; and some others followed Saudi Arabia’s move. Thus, there is cautious optimism for rapprochement between Iran and the West, particularly the United States-but the hardliners oppose that and any further negotiations between Iran and the United States. The US-led alliance has been supporting ground operations against IS with their air strikes. But some people, like Daesh, have proven that they offer nothing – no alternative – but their own destruction.

He didn’t reply directly to Zarif’s tweet, but his choice of hashtag didn’t leave much to the imagination.

Committee member Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who represents PTI, stated that his party suggested that the Prime Minister should convene a meeting of the parliamentary leaders of various parties on the conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

On the Iranian side, the hardliners are willing to do anything to bring down the administration of President Hassan Rouhani.

Nevertheless, the fracture in U.S.-Saudi relations isn’t going away, because the foundations of the relationship – the interests the two countries had in common – are no longer as strong.