Turkey warns Saudi-Iran row will harm both countries

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir announced the cut in relations late Sunday and gave Iranian diplomatic personnel 48 hours to leave his country.

Saudi Arabia dismissed concerns that its severance of ties with Iran will harm efforts to negotiate peace in Syria even as its actions opened up a new sectarian rift among opposing sides in the war. Saudi allies Bahrain and Sudan have followed suit and the United Arab Emirates downgraded its ties with Iran.

Shiite cleric Nimr Al-Nimr was mourned in eastern Saudi Arabia after being executed on Saturday.

Meawhile, Iran said Riyadh had used the embassy incident and a similar attack on its consulate in the Iranian city of Mashhad as an “excuse” to stoke tensions.

Turkey on Monday urged Iran and Saudi Arabia to calm tensions in their diplomatic crisis, saying the hostility between the two key Muslim powers would only further escalate problems in an explosive region.

Moscow: Russia is ready to serve as an intermediary to resolve the dispute between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Saudi Arabia is Britain’s most important trade partner in the Middle East and was its biggest market for arms exports in 2014.

UAE: While they didn’t entirely sever ties like Bahrain, government officials in the UAE did announce the implementation of a drastic reduction in relations with Iran.

However, Jubeir said Saudi Arabia had been right to execute Nimr, whom he accused of “agitating, organising cells, providing them with weapons and money”. Iran has backed Syrian President Bashar Assad, while Saudi Arabia is supporting some of the armed groups fighting to oust him.

On Saturday, protestors in the Iranian capital of Tehran stormed the Saudi Arabian embassy, raiding it and setting it on fire.

“[It] is a reaction to Iran’s aggressive policies over the years, and in particular over the past few months”.

Iran sent a letter on Monday to the UN Security Council expressing its “regret” over attacks by protesters on Saudi missions in the Islamic republic, vowing to prevent any similar incidents in the future.

“There have been direct concerns raised by USA officials to Saudi officials about the potential damaging consequences of following through on the execution, on mass executions, in particular, the execution of” al-Nimr, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and others spent significant time trying to bring the countries to the negotiating table and they both sat together at talks aimed at ending the civil war.

On Sunday, the Sudanese government condemned the attacks and declared its full solidarity with Saudi Arabia.