Iran’s Khamenei condems attack on Saudi embassy

“Like the British embassy attack before it, this was against the country [Iran] and Islam, and I didn’t like it,” said the country's supreme leader. Britain’s embassy in Tehran was stormed and ransacked by a mob in 2011.

TEHRAN // Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei condemned on Wednesday an attack on Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Tehran as “a very bad and wrong incident”.

“Like the British embassy attack before it, this was against the country [Iran] and Islam, and I didn’t like it,” he said.

Britain’s embassy in Tehran was stormed and ransacked by a mob in 2011.

The arson attack on Saudi Arabia’s embassy on January 2 — for which local media reports say as many as 140 people have been arrested — led to Riyadh quickly severing diplomatic ties with Tehran.

The incident occurred late at night after Saudi Arabia executed Shiite cleric and activist Nimr Al Nimr, a force behind 2011 anti-government protests in the eastern province, for crimes against the kingdom.

Ayatollah Khamenei and Iranian officials lambasted Saudi Arabia over the killing.

However his remarks on Wednesday, in a speech to electoral officials ahead of the country’s parliamentary polls on February 26, underscored that the embassy attack had no sympathy from within the Islamic republic’s establishment.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani at the time said the violence was committed by “rogue elements” acting against the country’s interests.

The embassy vandals took selfies and smartphone video footage where they were seen holding items stolen from inside the building, causing deep embarrassment in Tehran.

The cutting of relations set back efforts made by Mr Rouhani’s government since July, when a nuclear deal with the West was struck, to boost Iran’s clout in international diplomacy, particularly in peace talks on Syria.

In the weeks since tensions have only risen between Iran and Saudi Arabia, with each accusing the other of damaging the Middle East.

On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Adel Al Jubeir said the lifting of sanctions on Iran as a result of its nuclear deal with world powers will be a harmful development if it uses the extra money to fund “nefarious activities”,

Asked if Saudi Arabia had discussed seeking a nuclear bomb in the event Iran managed to obtain one despite its atomic deal, he said Saudi Arabia would do “whatever we need to do in order to protect our people”.

Mr Al Jubeir’s comments were the first to directly address the lifting of sanctions on Iran, although Saudi Arabia has previously welcomed Iran’s nuclear deal so long as it included a tough inspections regime.

But in private, officials have voiced concern that the deal would allow Iran greater scope to back militias and other allies across the region thanks to the extra funds it can access after sanctions are lifted and because of the reduced diplomatic pressure.

“It depends on where these funds go. If they go to support the nefarious activities of the Iranian regime, this will be a negative and it will generate a pushback. If they go towards improving the living standards of the Iranian people then it will be something that would be welcome,” Mr Al Jubeir said.

Saudi officials have also in recent years voiced fears that their most powerful ally, the United States, is disengaging with the Middle East, something some of them have said may have contributed to Syria’s descent into civil war.

Jubeir said he did not believe Washington was retreating from the region, but emphasised that the world looked to it as the sole superpower to provide stability.

“If an American decline were to happen or an American withdrawal were to happen, the concern that everybody has is that it would leave a void, and whenever you have a void, or a vacuum, evil forces flow,” Mr Al Jubeir said.

Riyadh accuses Tehran of fomenting instability across the region and the two back opposing sides in wars in Syria and Yemen and political tussles in Iraq, Lebanon and Bahrain.

*Agence France-Presse and Reuters