Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued an angry rebuke to “blasphemous” regional rival Saudi Arabia on Monday, calling on the Muslim world to question its management of Islam’s holiest sites.
“Because of Saudi rulers’ oppressive behaviour towards God’s guests, the world of Islam must fundamentally reconsider the management of the two holy places and the issue of hajj,” Khamenei said in a statement published on his website.
He published the comments ahead of this month’s annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Some 60,000 Iranians took part last year, but have been effectively barred this year after negotiations between the two countries fell apart.
Khamenei accused Saudi Arabia’s ruling family, who are the custodians of Islam’s holiest sites in Mecca and Medina, of politicising the pilgrimage, and turning themselves into “small and puny Satans who tremble for fear of jeopardising the interests of the Great Satan (the United States).”
“Saudi rulers… who have blocked the proud and faithful Iranian pilgrims’ path to the Beloved’s House, are disgraced and misguided people who think their survival on the throne of oppression is dependent on defending the arrogant powers of the world, on alliances with Zionism and the US and on fulfilling their demands,” he wrote.
Khamenei was also fiercely critical of the Saudi response to a deadly stampede during last year’s hajj, which killed some 2,300 foreign pilgrims, including an estimated 464 Iranians.
“Instead of apology and remorse and judicial prosecution of those who were directly at fault in that horrifying event, Saudi rulers — with utmost shamelessness and insolence — refused to allow the formation of an international Islamic fact-finding committee,” he said.
“The hesitation and failure to rescue the half-dead and injured people… is also obvious and incontrovertible,” he added.
“They murdered them.”
Shiite Iran and predominantly Sunni Saudi Arabia are at odds over a raft of regional issues, notably the conflicts in Syria and Yemen in which they support opposing sides.
Iran is particularly opposed to the Saudi monarchy’s close relationship with the US and Israel.
“The world of Islam, including Muslim governments and peoples, must familiarise themselves with the Saudi rulers and correctly understand their blasphemous, faithless, dependent and materialistic nature,” Khamenei wrote.
In January, relations were severed after Iranian demonstrators torched Saudi Arabia’s embassy and a consulate following the kingdom’s execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.
It was announced in May that Iranians would not take part in this year’s hajj for the first time in almost three decades, with Riyadh saying that Tehran’s demands were “unacceptable”.
Two rounds of talks led to agreements in some areas, including to use electronic visas which could be printed out by Iranian pilgrims, as Saudi diplomatic missions remain shut in Iran.
However, Riyadh claimed Tehran wanted the right to organise demonstrations “that would cause chaos”, and the two sides failed to sign the hajj memorandum of understanding that is signed annually with more than 70 countries.
