Iran’s Khamenei: ‘Evil’ Saudi royals don’t deserve to manage holy sites

Jane Kinninmont, deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa programme at the Chatham House think tank in London, said the world needed to pay more attention to the “cold conflict” between Iran and Saudi Arabia. “The hesitation and failure to rescue the half-dead and injured people.is also obvious and incontrovertible. They murdered them”, he wrote in his blog.

Khamenei described the Saudi royal family as “small and puny Satans who tremble for fear of jeopardising the interests of the Great Satan (the United States)”.

Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti, Al al-Sheikh hit back in a Saudi newspaper saying: “We have to understand that they (Iranians) are not Muslims”.

He added that Iranians’ “hostility towards Muslims”, particularly Sunnis, “is an old” thing.

The reference to the Zoroastrian religion that prevailed in Iran before Islam is used by fundamentalist Sunnis as an insult against Iranians.

“The government of Saudi Arabia must be held accountable for this incident”, Rouhani told a weekly Cabinet meeting.

Saudi Arabia is expecting a more subdued Hajj and ensuing Eid celebration this year: the global slump in oil prices has led to government spending cuts and a drop in consumer spending, leaving citizens facing their most austere Eid in more than a decade.

In May this year, the Iranian Hajj authority officially announced that no pilgrims from the country will be going on Hajj this year.

Last year’s nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, which unleashed Iran’s economy from years of ever-tightening economic sanctions, raised Saudi concerns that a richer Iran would seek to impose itself more in the region.

The official Saudi toll of 769 people killed and 934 injured has not changed since September 26.

The GCC accused Tehran of seeking to “politicise” the Hajj, whilst simultaneously praising Saudi efforts to accommodate Muslim pilgrims. But in 1987, Saudi police and national guards sealed part of the planned demonstration route, leading to a confrontation.

Among other things, the missive also referred to 2015’s stampede when at least 450 Iranian pilgrims were killed.

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, accused Tehran of preventing Iranian pilgrims from performing the annual Hajj pilgrimage and “politicizing” the ritual. A number of prominent Iranian officials, including Iran’s former ambassador to Lebanon, were killed in the stampede.

“The Iranian authorities don’t want the Iranian pilgrims to come here for reasons concerning the Iranians themselves, ” Saudi state news agency SPA quoted the crown prince as saying.

This year pilgrims from Iran will be unable to attend the hajj, which officially starts on September 11, after talks between the two nations on arrangements broke down in May.

In one of the first rites of hajj, which formally starts on Saturday, white-clad pilgrims take their turn circling the Kaaba in a procession that continues 24 hours a day.

Iranians are predominantly Shi’a Muslim.