Burned embassy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Tehran

The Embassy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Tehran () is the

diplomatic mission A diplomatic mission or foreign mission is a group of people from a state or organization present in another state to represent the sending state or organization officially in the receiving or host state. In practice, the phrase usually denotes ...

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the centre of the Middle East, it covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries ...

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

. The embassy was closed in January 2016 when direct bilateral diplomatic relations between the two governments were severed following the mob attack and sacking of the embassy in January 2016. Following a diplomatic agreement brokered by China in March 2023, the embassy was reopened in August 2023.

History

Prior to January 2016, the mission was headed by Hasan Ibrahm Hamad Al-Zoyed, ambassador of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Tehran. After the

execution Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in ...

Nimr al-Nimr Ayatollah Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr (21 June 1959 – 2 January 2016), commonly referred to as Sheikh Nimr, was a Saudi Shia sheikh from Al-Awamiyah in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province. His arrest and execution were widely condemned by various ...

, a prominent

Shiite Shia Islam is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that Muhammad designated Ali ibn Abi Talib () as both his political successor (caliph) and as the spiritual leader of the Muslim community (imam). However, his right is understood ...

cleric, in January 2016 by the Saudi government, an angry Iranian mob attacked the Embassy in Tehran. The embassy was set on fire by an Iranian mob with a Molotov cocktail. The embassy was empty during the protests.

Iranian police The Police Command of the Islamic Republic of Iran, abbreviated as Faraja ( ), is the uniformed police force in Iran. The force was created in early 1992 by merging the Shahrbani (, ), Gendarmerie (, ), and Islamic Revolutionary Committees (, ) ...

responded to the riot and arrested 40 people during the incident. The day after, protests were held again by hundreds of Iranians in Tehran, and

President Rouhani Hassan Rouhani (; born Hassan Fereydoun, 12 November 1948) is an Iranian politician who served as the seventh president of Iran from 2013 to 2021. He is also a sharia lawyer ("Wakil"), academic, former diplomat and Islamic cleric. He served a ...

called the damage on embassy "by no means justifiable". The

Iranian Foreign Ministry The Ministry of Foreign Affairs () is an Iranian government ministry headed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who is a member of cabinet. The office is currently held by Abbas Araghchi after the death of Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. Foreign poli ...

has appealed for the public to calm and to respect diplomatic premises. The Saudi Arabia government severed the bilateral relationship between the two governments following the incident. The embassy resumed operations in August 2023. Saudi Arabia's first ambassador to Iran since the severing of relations, Abdullah bin Saud al-Anzi, arrived on 5 September 2023.

References

{{Iran–Saudi Arabia relations

Iran–Saudi Arabia relations

History

See also

References