The Protests of a Cleric’s Death in the Middle East

Iranian protesters hold portraits of prominent Shiite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr as they confront riot police during a demonstration against his execution by Saudi authorities, on January 3, 2016, outside the Saudi embassy in Tehran.

Riyadh responded by announcing it would sever diplomatic ties, with staff from the Iranian mission given 48 hours to leave and Saudi counterparts recalled home from Tehran.

On Saturday, Saudi Arabia put Sheikh al-Nimr and three other Shiite dissidents to death, along with a number of al Qaida militants.

Al-Nimr’s execution sparked widespread protests from Shiites across the Middle East, who claimed he wasn’t a terrorist, but a stalwart critic of Saudi Arabia’s policies against members of the Shiite religion.

The Saudi government announced the executions early Saturday, saying the prisoners had been convicted on terrorism charges.

Qassem said Saudi Arabia had “arrived at its point of maximum weakness and is digging its own grave”.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, condemned Sheikh al-Nimr’s execution, saying on Sunday the cleric “neither invited people to take up arms nor hatched covert plots”.

The leader of Lebanon’s Shia Hezbollah movement, Hassan Nasrallah, launched his sharpest attack yet on the Saudi ruling family on Sunday, accusing them of seeking to ignite a Shia-Sunni civil war across the world. A Saudi diplomat, Mousa’ad al-Ghamdi, died in Tehran of wounds sustained when he fell out of an embassy window and Riyadh accused Tehran of delaying his transfer to a hospital in Saudi Arabia.

And he warned that his execution could trigger “negative reactions” inside and outside Saudi Arabia.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was among those who strongly denounced the move, yet arguing that the Iranian nation would not allow the execution to be used as a pretext by “radical” groups as a means to resort to “illegal” measures. Some 40 people have been arrested so far, according to the Associated Press. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, threatened divine retribution for the killing of the cleric, whose only crime, he said, was criticizing the Saudi goverment.

Saudi Arabia says that by condemning the execution of an opposition Shiite cleric, Iran has “revealed its true face represented in support for terrorism”.

There have also been outbreaks of unrest in Bahrain, where demonstrators took to the streets, and in the eastern Iranian city of Mashhad, where the Saudi consulate was the scene of protests.

Saudi shiites protested al-Nimr’s arrest in 2012, and again protested when he was sentenced to death in 2014.

– The invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in Iraq empowered the country’s Shi’ite majority and resulted in a shift in its political alignment towards Iran.

Protesters in the Iranian capital Tehran attacked the Saudi embassy with petrol bombs and stormed the building in the wake of the executions. He wanted the Saudi royal family deposed but publicly advocated peaceful protests over violence. The Guard said in a statement that Saudi Arabia’s “medieval act of savagery” in putting al-Nimir death will lead to the “downfall” of the monarchy.