Iranian official: Saudi rulers are serving the Zionists and Americans

The crisis erupted when Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Shi’ite cleric on January 2 and Iranian protesters retaliated by storming and setting fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran.

Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs, Sartaj Aziz, said on Tuesday that Pakistan would not provide ground troops to Saudi Arabia.

Iran has sacked a senior security official over his failure to stop the ransacking of Saudi Arabia’s embassy, which led the Sunni-ruled kingdom to sever diplomatic relations. Interestingly one of these partner countries (Yemen) is also the one that is bombed by Saudi Arabia on a daily basis.

In Yemen, Iran supports the Shiite al-Houthi rebels, while Saudi Arabia in April 2015 cobbled together a Sunni coalition that last week ended a fragile cease-fire that had been in place since the 15 of December a year ago.

Al Qaeda has warned Saudi Arabia it will pay for the executions of dozens of its members, saying they were meant to be a new year’s gift to Riyadh’s Western allies aimed at consolidating the rule of the Saud dynasty.

On Sunday, Jaber Ansari said that Iran was seeking to sooth tensions in the region including its frictions with Saudi Arabia.

“Iran doesn’t have qualms and doesn’t hesitate to use the sectarian card as a way to dominate the region and interfere in the internal affairs of Arab countries through issuing threats and support for extremist groups”, he said.

Drawing upon the companionship of some Arab states in severing or downgrading diplomatic ties with Iran, he said that some states are trying to solve their economic problems by Saudi petro-dollars or they share political interests with Riyadh.

While the statement did not announce any specific action against Iran, it did say that a four-nation committee has been formed to discuss relations between the two countries.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Shah Mehmood Qureshi had said that being an important country of the Muslim world, Pakistan could play a pivotal role to ease tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Zarif wrote that he and President Hassan Rouhani had shown readiness to engage in negotiations with the Saudi authorities to promote security and stability in the region and combating extremism. “We hope that reason will prevail”.