Sunni States Lining Up Against Shia Iran

We may be witnessing the beginning of a regional civil war between Sunni and Shi’a and crossing national borders. NYTimes:

TEHRAN — Three Sunni-led countries joined Saudi Arabia on Monday in severing or downgrading diplomatic ties with Iran, worsening a geopolitical conflict with sectarian dimensions in one of the world’s most volatile regions.

The diplomatic protests from the three countries — Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates — came as Iran accused Saudi Arabia of using an attack on the Saudi Embassy in Tehran two days earlier as a pretext for diverting attention from its problems.

Iranian protesters ransacked and set fire to the embassy on Saturday, along with the Saudi Consulate in Iran’s second-largest city, Mashhad, after the Saudis executed a Shiite cleric who had criticized the Sunni kingdom’s treatment of its Shiite minority. The Shiite cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, was among a group of 47 people who were executed.

Relations between Shiite Iran and Bahrain, a Shiite-majority island nation ruled by a Sunni monarchy, were already poor, with Bahrain having accused Iran of meddling in its internal affairs by backing various Shiite opposition groups since the start of the Arab Spring, in 2011.

In October, after accusing Iran of shipping weapons to the island, Bahrain recalled its ambassador in Tehran and expelled the Iranian chargé d’affaires in its capital, Manama.

In a statement on Monday, Bahrain said the attack on the embassy and consulate in Iran occurred “without the slightest regard for values, the law or morality” and “confirms a determination to spread devastation and destruction, and provoke unrest and strife in the region by providing protection and support for terrorists and extremists and the smuggling of weapons and explosives for use by its affiliated terrorist cells.”

Sudan on Monday expelled the Iranian ambassador in Khartoum, the capital, in protest at the attack on the embassy, the Iranian news agency Fars reported.

The United Arab Emirates, which had already formally protested the embassy attack, on Monday downgraded its ties by recalling its ambassador to Tehran and ordering a reduction in the number of Iranian diplomats stationed in the Emirates.

“This exceptional step has been taken in the light of Iran’s continuous interference in the internal affairs of Gulf and Arab states, which has reached unprecedented levels,” the emirates’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

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