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posted by martyb on Tuesday January 05 2016, @10:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the when-elephants-argue-it-is-hard-on-the-ants dept.

Protest in Tehran after Saudis execute Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr

CNN:

Saudi Arabia said Saturday it had executed 47 people in a single day, including a dissident Shiite cleric, Nimr al-Nimr, who had repeatedly spoken out against the government and the Saudi royal family.

Nimr had been convicted of inciting sectarian strife, sedition and other charges following his 2012 arrest.

Iran, Saudi Arabia's regional rival, summoned the Saudi ambassador in Tehran to condemn the execution, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. The Shiite-majority nation issued a statement deploring the execution and warning that Saudi Arabia would pay a heavy price for its policies.

Iranian Protesters Ransack Saudi Embassy After Execution of Shiite Cleric

NYT:

Iranian protesters ransacked and set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Tehran on Saturday after Saudi Arabia executed an outspoken Shiite cleric who had criticized the kingdom's treatment of its Shiite minority.

The executions coincided with increased attacks in Saudi Arabia by the jihadists of the Islamic State and an escalating rivalry between the Sunni monarchy and Shiite Iran that is playing out in conflicts in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere. Sheikh Nimr was an outspoken critic of the Saudi monarchy and was adopted as a symbolic leader by Shiite protesters in several Persian Gulf countries during the Arab Spring uprisings.

[More after the break.]

Saudi Arabia cuts ties with Iran as row over cleric's death escalates

Reuters:

Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran on Sunday, responding to the storming of its embassy in Tehran in an escalating row between the rival Middle East powers over Riyadh's execution of a Shi'ite Muslim cleric.

Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told a news conference in Riyadh that the envoy of Shi'ite Iran had been asked to quit Saudi Arabia within 48 hours. The kingdom, he said, would not allow the Islamic republic to undermine its security.

Jubeir said the attack in Tehran was in line with what he said were earlier Iranian assaults on foreign embassies there and with Iranian policies of destabilizing the region by creating "terrorist cells" in Saudi Arabia.Speaking on Iranian state television, Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in Tehran's first response that by cutting diplomatic ties, Riyadh could not cover up "its major mistake of executing Sheikh Nimr".

The United States, Saudi Arabia's biggest backer in the West, responded by encouraging diplomatic engagement and calling for leaders in the region to take "affirmative steps" to reduce tensions

So what do you think; Is this another normal spat between regional leaders looking for their interest on the region, or a signal of worse things to come?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 06 2016, @12:32AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 06 2016, @12:32AM (#285416)

    Anyway the relevance to this story is its the oldest ruse in the book, when the economy tanks start a war to distract the population.

    A slight, but common, misconception. Few leaders actually start wars or other disasters, they reap the benefits when inevitably a negative event happens, sometimes going so far as to allow an event to happen. People see through ploys and plots rather easily and leaders don't stay in power. Far better for them to just wait and strike when opportunity presents itself.

    The event and the goal does not even need to be logically connected so long as they can be emotionally connected when public stress is high. Note the latest anti-gun craze in the US. No one has the power to ban guns or ban freedom of speech so they simply wait for a negative event, ramp up the rhetoric, and take another swing at chipping away constitutional rights.