TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian President Hassan Rouhani blasted Saudi Arabia for supporting terror groups and launching wars of aggression against the Muslim nations, and said Riyadh should apologize for what it has done.
"If Saudi Arabia apologizes a hundred times to the Muslim nations for what it has done in the region, for the massacre of the Muslims, and for the Mina incident, it will still be not enough," President Rouhani said at a press conference in Rome on Wednesday.
He further maintained that Tehran does in no way seek continued tensions with Riyadh.
Riyadh cut relations with Tehran after protestors angry at prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr's execution stormed its embassy in Tehran on January 2 despite the Iranian officials' detention of 40 people in relations with the attack and their promise to pursue the issue.
Worse yet, Saudi warplanes launched airstrikes on Iran's embassy in the Yemeni capital earlier this month which injured the mission's guards. This is while Saudi media outlets reported that Riyadh plans to try four Iranians on espionage and terrorism charges, a move that is widely seen as yet another part of the crisis-escalation policy pursued by Riyadh against Tehran.
Pundits slam Ryiadh for its hawkish policies towards Iran, warning that the Saudi rulers might lose much in this self-driven crisis.
"Form terrorist groups, arm them, train them and initiate a proxy war to topple Iran's allied governments in the region, stand against an Iran-West nuclear deal that could end an over-a-decade-old crisis, attack every Shia community you see from Bahrain to Yemen and Nigeria, ally with Iran's arch foe Israel, order your police to humiliate Iranian Hajj pilgrims (and even sexually assault two boys), start a stampede and kill thousands of Muslims to see a few hundred Iranians dead (in Mina incident), crack down on the Shia community at home and behead a Shia leader, cut ties with Tehran and force small islands to follow suit, bomb Iran's embassy and slaughter every Iranian you see even under false pretexts. This has been the policy of Saudi Arabia towards Iran in the last few years," Analyst Mohammad Saleh Barghouthi said last week.