IRAN, EMERGING FROM SANCTIONS, FACES CRISIS AFTER SAUDI ARABIA EMBASSY ATTACK
Thomas Erdrbink
TEHRAN — When a Saudi state executioner beheaded the prominent Shiite dissident Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr on Saturday, the Shiite theocracy in Iran took it as a deliberate provocation by its regional rival and dusted off its favored playbook, unleashing hard-liner anger on the streets.
Within hours of the execution, nationalist Iranian websites were calling for demonstrations in front of the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and its consulate in the eastern Iranian city of Mashhad. The police, outnumbered, looked the other way as angry protesters set the embassy ablaze with firebombs, climbed the fences and vandalized parts of the building.
Now, Iranian leaders are suddenly forced to reckon with whether they played into the Saudis’ hands, finding themselves mired in a new crisis at a time they had been hoping to emerge from international sanctions as an accepted global player. Iran might have capitalized on global outrage at the executions by Saudi Arabia, but instead it finds itself once again characterized by adversaries as a provocateur in the region and abroad.
Beyond Mr. Nimr’s case, however, there have been several flash points between Iran and Saudi Arabia in recent months, with the nuclear deal and the wars in Syria and Yemen driving most of the tension.
Within Iran, there was also intense anger over the Saudis’ handling of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Before the summer, Iran temporarily halted pilgrimages to the holy city after accusations that Saudi security officials had sexually abused two Iranian teenage boys. Then, in September, hundreds of Iranians were among those killed in a stampede by pilgrims near Mecca.
Saudi opposition to the nuclear deal and the lifting of sanctions against Iran has driven more hard feelings here. Many Iranians were quick to point out Saudi Arabia’s alignment of interests with Israel, a hated enemy.
“Both countries are opposed to the nuclear deal; both want it to fail,” said Hamid Reza Taraghi, a political analyst and conservative politician. “During the nuclear talks we witnessed John Kerry shuttling between Israel and Saudi Arabia, hoping to appease both of them. We know of the secret trips of Saudi officials to Israel. Their only goal is to limit Iran, which of course they are unable to do.”
Some of the Iranians who rioted at the Saudi Embassy said they had friends fighting Saudi-backed extremist groups in Syria.
“We shouted, ‘Death to the house of al Saud!’ ” said Abolfazl, a protester who refused to give his family name out of fear of punishment. “We showed our anger and threw whatever we could find. There were police, but there were too few.”
Iran’s own internal tensions are playing out in the crisis, as well.
There was far from universal support within Iran for the nuclear deal, which some criticized as giving away too much to foreign interests. Now, with parliamentary elections scheduled for February, and with a coming election of the clerical council that in theory will choose the next supreme leader, the hard-liners are sure to use the issue, and the crisis with Saudi Arabia, to pummel allies of President Rouhani and others who favored the nuclear accord.
“What group here in Iran benefits politically from storming an embassy?” a former member of the Iranian National Security Council, Aziz Shahmohammadi, asked rhetorically. He was suggesting that the answer lay with the hard-liners — a loose alliance of clerics, ideologues and military commanders. “Such people are even against foreign soccer coaches to train our teams.”
The embassy attack played into their agenda of opposition to President Rouhani, whom Mr. Shahmohammadi said was clearly blindsided by the riot.
“For them, this might lead to electoral gains, an example that Iran is better off isolated. But they are missing the big picture here: We need and want peace and calm,” he said.
The act of cutting ties seems a simple one, but the consequences can be far-reaching. “We are moving increasingly towards conflict,” Mr. Shahmohammadi said.
“This is bad for the entire region — in Syria, in Yemen, and to a lesser extent in Lebanon and Iraq as well,” he added. “Cutting ties is fanning the flames in a region already on fire.”
Somini Sengupta contributed reporting from New York, and Ben Hubbard from Baghdad.
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