Oman: Attacks on Saudi missions in Iran are ‘unacceptable’

The crisis began at the weekend when Saudi Arabia executed prominent Shiite cleric and activist Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr as well as 46 other convicts, prompting a furious reaction from Tehran. “But Saudi Arabia, which thrives on tensions, has used this incident as an excuse to fuel the tensions”, Hossein Jaberi Ansari, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, said in televised remarks on Monday.

“Already both Bahrain and Sudan have cut off ties”.

“Turkey calls for abandoning the language of threats and a return to the language of diplomacy and asks that caution be used so that the tensions between the two countries does not negatively reflect on the region’s security, stability and peacefulness”, the ministry said on its website.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has delayed a trip to Saudi Arabia, the Times newspaper reported on Tuesday, but cited senior officials as saying this was unconnected to regional tensions sparked by the execution of a Shi’ite Muslim cleric. Saudi Arabia and Sunni Muslim allies are bombing Yemen in an attempt to repel the Shia rebel Houthi movement, which is allied with Iran.

Jordan is a beneficiary of large sums of Saudi aid.

On Tuesday, Kuwait recalled its ambassador to Tehran, citing “torching and sabotage activities” of Iranian demonstrators.

Tiny Kuwait is home to both Shiites and Sunnis living in peace and has the most free-wheeling political system among all Gulf nations. It’s been the scene of long-running, low-intensity unrest since 2011 Arab Spring-inspired protests. Indeed, the latest tensions have prompted fears of a region-wide sectarian conflict, but they also complicate USA efforts to forge a global coalition against the Islamic State group in the region. Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic ties with Iran on Sunday after protesters ransacked and set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and the consulate in Mashhad. The violence was linked to the Saudi execution of an opposition Shiite cleric.

Saudi Arabia’s allies rallied it to its side Monday, with a number of nations following its lead in either cutting or reducing diplomatic ties with Iran.

Vali Nasr, a Middle East scholar and dean of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., joined NPR’s “Morning Edition” today to discuss the deteriorating relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia. State media in Iran showed still photographs it said were of the diplomats arriving in Tehran on a Meraj Airlines jet.