Qatar recalls envoy to Iran after attacks on Saudi missions

After the execution at the weekend in Saudi Arabia of a leading Shia cleric, Iran has accused its Middle Eastern rival of a “trend of creating tension”.

Iranian protesters responded by attacking the Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad.

“Djibouti cut its diplomatic ties with Iran out of solidarity with Saudi Arabia”, Djiboutian Foreign Minister Mahamoud Ali Youssouf said on Wednesday.

The tiny Horn of Africa nation, which is home to the United States’ only military base on the African continent, joins Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Sudan in entirely severing relations with Iran.

Oil prices have fallen by more than 60% since mid-2014 as Opec kingpin Saudi Arabia refuses to lower production in a bid to push competitors out of the market, hurting the income of other producers, including Iran.

Shia-majority Iraq has close ties with Tehran.

While the deterioration in the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Iran has anxious investors, the surplus of oil in the global market remains a bigger threat, according to Mehdi Asali, Iran’s national representative to OPEC.

“Tomorrow the heads of the foreign ministries of Iraq and Oman, Ibrahim Jaafari and Yusuf bin Alawi, will arrive in Tehran to discuss the latest events and relations with Iran”, a source in the department said.

The most immediate casualty of intensified Saudi-Iranian tensions will be the recently launched U.S.-led diplomatic effort to end the horrific Syrian war that has already claimed more than 250,000 dead.

While Iran and Saudi Arabia profess a desire to cooperate diplomatically, both countries are now sure to double down their support for the opposing sides in Syria’s war.

Russian Federation has offered to mediate.

In his telephone talk with Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi, Obama reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to Iraq’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, the White House said in a statement.

Protests erupted after Saudi Arabia executed a senior Shia Muslim cleric.

Local media claim the cell is linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah.

Bahrain also reported dismantling a “terror” cell linked to the Iran-backed Hezbollah that was planning attacks in the kingdom.

He was arrested in 2012 after calling for two governorates to be separated from the kingdom.

ISIS “always seeks to free prisoners, but we calculate that the ending of the issues of prisoners will not happen except with the eradication of the rule of tyrants, and then destroying their prisons and razing them to the ground”, the extremist group said in an article posted online on Tuesday.