Saudi Arabia’s breach of ties with Iran will extend to cutting air traffic between the countries, ending commercial relations and barring its citizens from travel to the Islamic Republic, Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Monday.
Iranian pilgrims will still be welcome to visit Mecca and Medina, Mr Jubeir said in an interview, adding that Iran must behave like “a normal country” instead of “a revolution” and respect international norms before ties could be restored.
Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have severed diplomatic ties with Iran and given the Islamic republic’s diplomats 48 hours to leave the kingdom.
The moves, which come hours after protests over the execution by Saudi Arabia of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, mark a swift escalation in a strategic and sectarian rivalry that underpins conflicts across the Middle East.
Protesters stormed and set fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran and the execution also drew harsh criticism from senior Iranian figures.
Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir said Iranian diplomatic staff had 48 hours to leave his country and all Saudi diplomats in Iran had been recalled. Bahrain followed suit a short time later.
The mass execution of Sheikh al-Nimr and 46 others – the largest carried out by Saudi Arabia in three and a half decades – highlighted sectarian divisions in the region.
It also illustrated the kingdom’s new aggressiveness under King Salman. During his reign, Saudi Arabia has led a coalition fighting Shia rebels in Yemen and staunchly opposed regional Shia bastion Iran, even as Tehran struck a nuclear deal with world powers.
'Divine revenge'
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Saudi Arabia of “divine revenge” over Sheikh al-Nimr’s death, while Riyadh accused Tehran of supporting “terrorism”, in a war of words that threatened to escalate even as the US and European Union sought to calm the region.
Mr al-Jubeir said the Iranian regime had “a long record of violations of foreign diplomatic missions” dating back to the occupation of the US embassy in 1979, and such incidents were “a flagrant violation of all international agreements”.
He said Iran’s “hostile policy” was aimed “at destabilising the region’s security,” accusing Tehran of smuggling weapons and explosives and planting terrorist cells in the kingdom and other countries in the region. He said Saudi Arabia would not allow Iran “to undermine our security”.
“The history of Iran is full of negative and hostile interference in Arab countries, always accompanied with subversion, demolition and killing of innocent souls,” Mr al-Jubeir said, just before announcing the severing of diplomatic relations.
Sheikh al-Nimr was a central figure in Arab Spring-inspired protests by Saudi Arabia’s Shia minority until his arrest in 2012. He was convicted of terrorism charges but denied advocating violence.
Religious split
While the split between Sunnis and Shias dates back to the early days of Islam and disagreements over the successor to the Prophet Muhammed, those divisions have only grown as they intertwine with regional politics, with both Iran and Saudi Arabia vying to be the Middle East’s top power.
Iran accuses Saudi Arabia of supporting terrorism, in part because it backs Syrian rebel groups fighting to oust its embattled ally, President Bashar Assad. Riyadh points to Iran’s backing of the Lebanese Hizbullah and other Shia militant groups in the region as a sign of its support for terrorism. Iran has also backed Shia rebels in Yemen known as Houthis.
Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard said Saudi Arabia’s “medieval act of savagery” would lead to the “downfall” of the country’s monarchy and its president Hassan Rouhani condemned Sheikh al-Nimr’s death.
However, he branded those who attacked the Saudi embassy as “extremists,” saying the act was “unjustifiable”.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry said that by condemning the execution, Iran had “revealed its true face represented in support for terrorism”.
In Tehran, a protest outside the Saudi embassy early on Sunday quickly grew violent as protesters threw stones and petrol bombs at the embassy, setting part of the building on fire. Forty people were arrested and investigators were pursuing other suspects.
‘Calm tensions’
Western powers sought to calm the tensions. In Washington, state department spokesman John Kirby said the Obama administration was aware of the Saudis’ severing of ties with Tehran, but stressed: “We believe that diplomatic engagement and direct conversations remain essential in working through differences and we will continue to urge leaders across the region to take affirmative steps to calm tensions.”
Earlier, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini spoke to Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and urged Tehran to “defuse the tensions and protect the Saudi diplomats”.
The disruption in relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran may have implications for peace efforts in Syria. US secretary of state John Kerry and others spent significant time trying to bring the countries to the negotiating table and they both sat together at talks aimed at finding a diplomatic solution to the civil war.
Last month Saudi Arabia convened a meeting of Syrian opposition figures that was designed to create a delegation to attend peace talks with the Syrian government that are supposed to begin this month.