Iranian protesters early yesterday stormed the Saudi Arabian embassy in Tehran and Shiite Muslim Iran’s top leader predicted “divine vengeance” over Saudi Arabia’s execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.
Protesters against cleric Nimr al-Nimr’s execution broke into the embassy building, smashed furniture and started fires before being ejected by police.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani condemned the execution as “inhuman,” but also called for the prosecution of “extremist individuals” for attacking the embassy and the Saudi Arabian consulate in the northeastern city of Mashhad, state media reported.
Tehran’s police chief said an unspecified number of “unruly elements” were arrested for attacking the embassy with firebombs and rocks. A prosecutor said 40 people were held.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, criticizing Saudi Arabia for the second straight day over al-Nimr’s execution, said politicians in the kingdom would face divine retribution for his death.
“The unjustly spilled blood of this oppressed martyr will no doubt soon show its effect and divine vengeance will befall Saudi politicians,” state TV reported Khamenei as saying.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards promised “harsh revenge” against the Sunni Saudi royal dynasty for Saturday’s execution of al-Nimr, considered a terrorist by Riyadh, but hailed in Iran as a champion of the rights of Saudi Arabia’s marginalized Shiite minority.
Al-Nimr, the most vocal critic of the dynasty among the Shiite minority, had come to be seen as a leader of the sect’s younger activists, who had tired of the failure of older, more measured leaders to achieve equality with Sunnis.
Although most of the 47 men killed in the kingdom’s biggest mass execution in decades were Sunnis convicted of al-Qaeda attacks in Saudi Arabia a decade ago, it was al-Nimr and three other Shiites, all accused of involvement in police shootings, who attracted most attention in the region and beyond.
The move appeared to end any hopes that the appearance of a common enemy in the form of the Islamic State group would produce some rapprochement between the region’s leading Sunni and Shiite Muslim powers, allied to opposing sides in wars currently raging in Syria and Yemen.
Khamenei’s Web site carried a picture of a Saudi executioner next to notorious Islamic State executioner “Jihadi John,” with the caption: “Any differences?”
In Iraq, whose Shiite-led government is close to Iran, religious and political figures demanded that ties with Riyadh be severed, calling into question Saudi Arabian attempts to forge a regional alliance against the Islamic State.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS