China urges calm between Saudi Arabia and Iran

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari said on Monday that Iran seeks to maintain consistent ties with its neighbors including Saudi Arabia.

The ensuing crisis has seen Saudi Arabia and several Arab states cut or downgrade diplomatic ties with Iran.

Iran’s Interior Minister has told reporters storming Saudi embassy in Tehran has been organized by covert Saudi-affiliated hands.

In Cairo, the Arab League held an emergency meeting of foreign ministers.

“We will continue to act responsibly and constructively in solving the Syrian conflict”, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said while meeting UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura in Tehran.

Meanwhile, in the Sunni nation of Pakistan, the chief of the army announced that any threat to the territorial integrity of Saudi Arabia would provoke a sharp response from Pakistan. And when it comes to ending the war in Afghanistan, where Pakistan hopes to use its contacts with the Afghan Taliban to broker a political settlement, it wants the cooperation of both Saudi Arabia and Iran. They were also sent to Syria.

Recently, thousands of Iranians demonstrated against Saudi Arabia for the January 2 execution of a top Shiite cleric.

“Following the signing of the interim nuclear deal in November 2013, Saudi Arabia began devoting its resources to defeating the deal, driven by fear that its contrived Iranophobia was crumbling”.

Over the course of decades, Iran has regularly been accused in the West of sponsoring extremist groups, including Hezbollah and Hamas, and of direct involvement in terrorism, notably the 1994 attack on a Jewish center in Buenos Aires, Argentina that killed 85 people.

Last Friday, Saudi planes bombed buildings in the vicinity of the Iranian embassy in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. A Saudi court convicted him in May 2014 of sedition, rioting, protesting and robbery in Qatif district, home to numerous kingdom’s minority Shi’ites.

“In the wake of these executions, we reiterate our call to the Government of Saudi Arabia to protect human rights, respect peaceful expressions of dissent and ensure fairness in judicial proceedings”.

On Sunday the Arab League said Iran’s reaction to the executions was “flagrant interference” in Saudi affairs.