Saudi Arabia severs diplomatic ties with Iran

The execution of 56-year-old al-Nimr has fuelled tensions in the Middle East, with Shiite-majority countries expressing condemnation and the kingdom’s diplomatic missions in Shia-dominated Iran coming under attack.

Jubeir said Saudi Arabia would not let Iran undermine its security, accusing it of having “distributed weapons and planted terrorist cells in the region”.

On the other side, Iranian officials don’t hide their contempt for the Saudi system and its support for Islamist groups.

Iranian protestors ransacked the Saudi Embassy early Sunday morning, reacting with fury to Saudi Arabia’s execution of prominent cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr on Saturday.

By Sunday afternoon crowds of protesters had gathered outside Saudi embassies in Beirut and Tehran, and protests were expected in al-Nimr’s hometown of al-Qatif in eastern Saudi Arabia.

Smoke rises as Iranian protesters set fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran, Sunday, Jan. 3, 2016.

Tehran’s police chief said an unspecified number of “unruly elements” were arrested for attacking the embassy with petrol bombs and rocks.

Iran’s Shiite clerics have used al-Nimr’s death to lash out at Saudi Arabia, which is founded upon an ultraconservative Sunni ideology known as Wahhabism.

The two countries have always been at odds, but Saudi Arabia’s execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr on Saturday kicked off a new round of sparring between them that marks a unsafe shift in an already volatile region.

Iranian-backed militias and Lebanese Shi’ite militant group Hezbollah are fighting alongside the Syrian army against mainly Sunni insurgents backed by Saudi Arabia, other Gulf states and Turkey in a conflict that has cost over 250,000 lives. Authorities offered no details on who they suspected in the shooting.

The federal government is decrying a mass execution in Saudi Arabia which killed 47 people, including a prominent Saudi Shiite cleric.

Khamenei’s website carried a picture of a Saudi executioner next to notorious Daesh executioner “Jihadi John”, with the caption “Any differences?”. He also said Iranian diplomats were asked to evacuate the kingdom within 48 hours.

Iran and Saudi Arabia summoned each other’s envoys for consultations, and Saudi allies Egypt and the United Arab Emirates summoned Iranian officials in their capitals over the Tehran embassy assault.

But Ben Rich, researcher of Saudi politics at the University of New England, said Australia would likely keep turning a blind eye to Saudi Arabia’s human rights record.

It urged Iran to provide “required protection to diplomatic premises and staff, as well as adopting deterrent legal measures against rioters”.