Saudi Arabia will face “divine revenge” over its execution of a top Shiite cleric, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Sunday hours after protesters attacked the kingdom’s embassy in Tehran.
“The unjustly spilt blood of this martyr will have quick consequences,” Khamenei told clerics in the capital, referring to Nimr al-Nimr who was executed along with 46 other men on Saturday.
“This scholar neither encouraged people into armed action nor secretly conspired for plots but the only thing he did was utter public criticism rising from his religious zeal.”
“We received with deep sadness and regret the news of the martyrdom of a group of our brothers in the region,” Iraq’s top Shiite authority Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani said.
“The spilling of their pure blood — including of the late cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, may his soul rest in peace — is an injustice and an aggression,” Grand Ayatollah Sistani said.
Angry crowds protesting at Saudi Arabia’s execution of a top Shiite cleric set fire to the kingdom’s embassy in Tehran and stormed the building before being cleared out by police, reports said.
In Mashhad, Iran’s second biggest city, demonstrators yesterday meanwhile set fire to the Saudi consulate, according to ISNA news agency, carrying pictures of the alleged assault.
The incidents came hours after the announcement of the death of 56-year-old cleric Nimr al-Nimr, a key figure in anti-government protests in the kingdom since 2011.
The execution prompted strong condemnation from Shiite-majority Iran and Iraq. “There are flames inside the embassy… demonstrators were able to get inside but have since been cleared out,” the news agency said.
“The fire has destroyed the interior of the embassy,” an eyewitness said. “The police are everywhere and have dispersed the demonstrators, some of whom have been arrested.”
Protesters had been able to climb up onto the roof of the embassy before they were made to leave, it added. Websites carried pictures of demonstrators apparently clutching the Saudi flag, which had been pulled down.
Iranian media quoted foreign ministry spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari as asking police to “protect Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic missions in Tehran and Mashhad… and prevent any demonstrations in front of these sites.”
Nimr, who spent more than a decade studying theology in Iran, was among a group of 47 Shiites and Sunnis executed on Saturday on charges of terrorism.
Predominantly-Shiite Iran, the Wahhabi ideology kingdom’s longtime rival, said in reaction to Nimr’s execution that “the Saudi government supports terrorist movements and extremists, but confronts domestic critics with oppression and execution.”
It will “pay a high price for following these policies,” Jaber Ansari had warned before the attacks took place.
