TEHRAN -- Iran has “temporarily suspended” direct talks with Saudi Arabia, an outlet linked with the country’s top security body wrote on Sunday.
Iraq’s Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein had announced on Saturday during a diplomatic forum in Turkey’s Antalya that a fifth round of talks between the two regional rivals would be hosted by Baghdad on Wednesday.
But Nour News, affiliated with Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), which has taken point on the talks with the kingdom, said on Sunday that Iran has unilaterally suspended the talks.
Iran’s foreign ministry had previously said on many occasions that the country was ready to resume the talks soon.
Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic relations with Iran after angry protests were held outside its embassy in Tehran in 2016 in spontaneous reaction to the execution of a prominent Shia religious leader by the kingdom.
The report of the pause in rapprochement talks coincides with Saudi Arabia’s execution of scores of people in a single day, including at least 40 Shia Muslims from the restive Qatif region in the country’s oil-rich east.
On Sunday, condemnation poured in, with various Islamic and Saudi opposition groups stating that most of those executed had been jailed only for exercising their right to free expression of opinion.
In a strong-worded statement, Lebanon’s Hezbollah said the Saudi regime has “committed a horrific crime by executing dozens of oppressed people.”
“This crime of the terrorist regime of Saudi Arabia was added to its record which full of murder and bloodshed. The record of the Saudis is full of bloodshed and crime, from Iraq and Syria to Lebanon and elsewhere,” it said.
“The execution of dozens of oppressed people once again revealed
the true face of Saudi Arabia. This regime has exhibited the worst kind of sectarian discrimination,” Hezbollah added.
“This terrorist regime, which today dons the uniform of serving Islam and claims to serve the two holy shrines, has made every effort to serve the Zionist enemy.”
The latest executions by Saudi authorities in one day exceeded the total number of executions conducted in the Arab kingdom throughout 2021.
The Arabian Peninsula Opposition bloc, which is an umbrella for Saudi dissidents, said 41 of the executed prisoners belonged to the peaceful Al-Hirak al-Janoubi movement and hailed from the Shia-populated al-Ahsa and Qatif regions in the kingdom’s Eastern Province.
The bloc called the kingdom’s de facto ruler Muhammad bin Salman “nothing more than a murderer, who enjoys shedding the blood of the innocent”.
The mass execution, the bloc said, was carried out against young people, who had exercised their right to express their opinion and had been imprisoned as a result.
The ruling Al Saud regime has once more proved to the world that it is a “murderous and savage” regime, it said, adding the mass execution proved that all of bin Salman’s claims of seeking to introduce reforms are nothing more than “empty propaganda.”
Abu Ala al-Walai, the secretary of Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada which is a subdivision of Iraq’s popular Hashd al-Sha’abi force, said the Saudi regime went ahead with the execution after finding the world busy with the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
“Through these executions, the Saudi regime has proven its sectarian nature,” he said.
“Saudi Arabia continues its violation of human rights through the executions and seeks to mislead the world by accusing Shia dissidents of terrorism,” Iraq’s Nujaba spokesman Nasr al-Shammari said.
Iraq’s Islamic Dawa Party said the mass execution was carried out within the framework of Saudi government’s state terrorism against its own civilians, which belies the Saudi rulers’ claims about reforms in the country.
Qais Khazali, secretary-general of Iraqi resistance movement Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, said for his part that the Al Saud regime continues to insist on carrying out atrocities that are in violation of the most basic Islamic regulations.
Yemeni Information Minister Dhaifullah al-Shami said the victims of Saudi mass executions included seven Yemenis and 41 citizens of the kingdom’s Shia-dominated Qatif region, calling the mass execution “a crime against humanity.”
Such crimes are carried out with the United States’ green light, and prove the bogus nature of the American democracy, he added.