TEHRAN, IRAN: The bitter war of words between Iran and Saudi Arabia intensified Wednesday ahead of the annual hajj pilgrimage from which Iranians have been excluded for the first time in decades.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called on the Muslim world to unite and “punish” the Saudi government for its actions in the region.
“If the existing problems with the Saudi government were merely the issue of the hajj… maybe it would have been possible to find a way to resolve it and put it in the right direction,” he told a cabinet meeting, according to the IRNA state news agency.
“Unfortunately, this government by committing crimes in the region and supporting terrorism in fact shed the blood of Muslims in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.”
Iranians have been blocked from the annual pilgrimage to Islam’s holiest places in Saudi Arabia, due to start Saturday, after talks on safety and logistical issues fell apart in May.
Earlier this week, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei launched a furious rebuke of the Saudi management of the hajj and holy sites, accusing the ruling family of “murder” over the deaths of nearly 2,300 pilgrims in a stampede during last year’s event.
He was due to meet later on Wednesday with the families of some of the more than 400 Iranian victims of the stampede.
“The hesitation and failure to rescue the half-dead and injured people… is also obvious and incontrovertible. They murdered them,” he wrote on his website Monday.
The head of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council hit back at Khamenei’s remarks on Wednesday, calling them “inappropriate and offensive… and a desperate attempt to politicise” the hajj.
(Sourced from agencies, Feature image courtesy:www.pbs.org)
