Iran and Saudi Arabia’s Diverging Attitudes
A member of the Iranian Parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee revealed details about the person behind the Saudi embassy attack in Tehran. “Unfortunately, a person with a criminal record has succeeded in organizing certain forces who did not know him well,” Mohammad Reza Mohseni Sani told Shahrvand in an interview.
Early in January, enraged protesters in Tehran stormed the Saudi embassy after Saudi Arabia executed 47 people, among them a prominent Shiite cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic ties with Iran in response, even though Iranian leaders condemned the attack and vowed to persecute those involved.
“The individual has done similar things before. He has had radical moves in several cities and there are records of him in such incidents. In the Saudi embassy incident, he managed to gather and organize a group of people who attacked the Saudi embassy building after 10:30 p.m. and set the embassy on fire in the face of police restraint and negligence,” he added.
The MP says the indicted person has taken these measures because of his “weak faith and beliefs” and he is rather too superficial.
Dismissing early claims by some Iranian officials, he said the incident was not spontaneous but quite organized. “Regarding their affinity with British Shi’ism, I should say it is not true,” he said. “The judiciary should seriously deal with the case. Unfortunately, there was no serious action against such conduct in the past, so they have been repeated. We expect the judiciary to investigate and identify the various aspects of the case and then penalize the violators and those who committed negligence so that incidents like this will not harm the country’s security,” he added.
“These people are being seriously treated; many of them have been arrested and the person, who was in fact the main orchestrator conducting his forces from abroad, was arrested upon arrival in the country and is now being tried,” the MP stated.
The update on the judiciary procedure came hours before Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi left Tehran for the Saudi Arabian port city of Jeddah Tuesday to participate in an Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) emergency meeting, convened to discuss the recent diplomatic tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Yesterday, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir published an op-ed in the New York Times calling for a change in Iran’s behavior, accusing Iran of sponsoring terrorism. The op-ed came as a response to an article published on Jan. 10, 2016 by Mohammad-Javad Zarif in which the Iranian Foreign Minister warned against the Saudis’ “reckless extremism”. Both countries say they are not looking for escalating tensions but a resumption of diplomatic ties would take a change in the opposite side’s behavior.