Saudis Act Like ISIS, Says Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Amid Seething Sectarian Tensions
by Patrick Goodenough, CNSnews:
Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic ties with Iran Sunday in response to damage caused to its embassy in Tehran, as Shi’ites in Iran and across the Islamic world protested the execution by the Saudis of a prominent minority Shi’ite cleric.
The world’s foremost Sunni and Shi’ite nations accused each other of stoking sectarian strife and promoting terrorism.
Saudi Arabia on Saturday executed 47 people accused of terrorism, including al-Qaeda convicts and a Shi’ite cleric and persistent critic of the Sunni ruling family, Nimr Baqr al-Nimr. Beheadings took place in eight cities and execution by firing squad in another four, according to Saudi authorities.
It was not clear whether Nimr – who was based in the kingdom’s oil-rich Eastern Province, where the “Arab spring” inspired Shia protests in 2011 – was beheaded or shot. His body was reportedly buried in an undisclosed location.
Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) charged the Saudi regime with acting like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL), the Sunni jihadist group notorious for beheading its victims.
The IRGC in a statement also called the execution of Nimr “part of a Zionist plot to sow discord” between Sunnis and Shias, and predicted it would lead to the collapse of the Saudi government.
Warnings of an end to the fundamentalist Wahhabi regime also came from Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Addressing clerics in Tehran on Sunday Khamenei described Nimr as an “innocent scholar” and said “the hands of divine vengeance will surely snatch – by their necks – those cruel individuals who took his life.”
