FROM TRAGEDY TO CONFRONTATION

The mass deaths of pilgrims in Mina valley near Mecca was a major tragedy for all of the Muslim community. At the same time, it revealed an increase in tension between some of the most influential countries of the Middle East - Saudi Arabia and Iran, which lay claims to leadership of the Islamic world.

According to official reports, 769 people were killed and 934 were injured on 24 September in a stampede that occurred as Muslims performed the ritual of stoning the devil (Ramy al-Jamarat) during the hajj in Mecca.

This is not the first tragedy to have taken place in recent years during Muslim pilgrimages to Islamic shrines. Similar incidents occurred in 2004 and 2006, after which Saudi Arabia invested heavily in improving infrastructure and safety in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. In subsequent years, the hajj passed off without any major incidents. However, tragic events did take place this year.

Back on 11 September, during preparations for the festival of sacrifice, about 100 people were killed as a construction crane fell on the al-Haram Mosque in Mecca, in the courtyard of which there is the main Islamic shrine - Kaaba. However, the mass deaths of people in the stampede in Mina valley raised the issue of safety of Muslim pilgrims very acutely again.

The Saudi king, Salman Bin-Abd-al-Aziz Al-Sa'ud, one of the official titles of whom is "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques" (Mecca and Medina), ordered an amendment to the plan for hajj. Details of the plan are yet to be announced, but the investigation of the tragedy in Mina valley is taking a serious turn, and the Saudi authorities have set up a special commission. However, without waiting for the final results of the investigation, officials in Riyadh have made statements that suggest that the pilgrims are to blame for the tragedy.

The Saudi minister of health, Khalid al-Falih, said that the tragedy took place because some pilgrims had failed to comply with regulations as they "neglected the schedule and timeframe that were set for them to start movement". The Saudi Civil Defence General Directorate specified that the tragedy in Mina valley took place due to a collision of two flows of people moving from pilgrims' tent camp to the venue of common prayer on the first day of Id al-Adha (Qurban Bayram) holiday. The Saudi authorities also said that intense heat was among causes of the tragedy. According to a representative of the Interior Ministry, Gen Turki al-Faysal, "high temperature contributed to an increase in the number of casualties".

However, not all countries who had their representatives killed in the stampede near Mecca seemed happy with the explanations Riyadh gave, especially Iran, which, according to official reports alone, lost 226 people in the tragedy (plus, another 344 pilgrims from the Islamic Republic are missing). Tehran voiced serious accusations against Saudi Arabia, which suggests a further deterioration in bilateral relations.

First of all, we should note the speech that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani delivered at the 70th UN General Assembly session. He said that it was Saudi Arabia that failed to ensure safety during the hajj which brought together almost 2m people from 180 countries. Rouhani said that Saudi Arabia had demonstrated "incompetence" and "mismanagement of the process" when organizing the hajj.

"I am speaking on behalf of a great nation that mourns the deaths of a thousand Muslim pilgrims and the deaths of hundreds of its citizens," Rouhani said. "Due to irresponsibility, it was not possible even to identify the missing or to immediately return the bodies of those killed to their grieving families. The scale of this disaster, which killed innocent people from all over the world, is so big that it cannot be regarded as a natural disaster or a local problem."

The Iranian president pointed out the need for the Saudi authorities not only to acknowledge their responsibility for the poor organization of the relief operation, but also "the need to prepare conditions for an independent and clear investigation of the causes of this disaster and to explore ways to prevent a similar incident from happening in the future". In this context, at a meeting with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Hassan Rouhani urged the world body to put pressure on Riyadh to get it to cooperate more closely with Muslim countries, including Iran, to investigate the Mina valley tragedy.

Iran's spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i also blamed the stampede near Mecca on the Saudi authorities and demanded that they apologize to the victims and families of those killed. He stressed that "the Islamic world has a lot of questions" for Riyadh.

It should be acknowledged that the position of the Saudis on a number of issues related, in particular, to Tehran's reaction to the tragedy cannot but cause a number of questions indeed. Immediately after the tragedy Iran offered assistance with helping the injured, identifying corpses, and returning the bodies of the deceased to their families. However, Saudi Arabia responded to this request with silence and, in addition, denied visas to the members of a delegation of a special Iranian committee which planned to go to the site of the tragedy, start searching for missing people, organize delivery of the bodies of the killed to their homes and monitor the medical treatment of people injured in the stampede.

In addition, Iran has never received information about the fate of the hundreds of missing Iranian pilgrims. Tehran does not seem to believe the number of killed pilgrims cited by the Saudis.

According to Iran, Riyadh deliberately conceals the actual number of casualties so as not to face even more criticism. Tehran believes that the actual number of casualties in the tragedy could be over 5,000.

Another reason why Iran responded with a negative reaction is the rejection by Saudi Foreign Minister Adil al-Jubayr of proposals from Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to discuss the consequences of the Mecca tragedy on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

The effective Saudi reluctance to deal with Iran gives grounds to the latter to back theories according to which the bloody stampede was caused by the negligence of the Saudi authorities. Thus, the Lebanese newspaper Al-Diyar argues that the cause of the tragedy was the appearance in Mina valley of a vice-heir to the Saudi throne, Prince Muhammad Bin-Salman, who holds the post of defence minister. He was accompanied by 200 guards and 150 police officers, which caused a clutter of flows of pilgrims when the ritual was taking place.

To all appearances, the Iranians support this theory, believing that the stampede took place because the two main roads in the valley were closed to allow for the passage of the royal motorcade. Not surprisingly, Iranian Prosecutor-General Ebrahim Ra'isi demands punishment for those responsible for the deaths of the pilgrims, because "under international law, such a tragedy, no doubt, is subject to criminal prosecution". Tehran is even expressing intention to file a lawsuit with the UN's International Court in The Hague.

However, Riyadh rejects the accusations levelled against it. The Saudi authorities have flatly denied reports that the stampede during the hajj was triggered by the blocking of roads and demanded that Iran should not use the tragedy for political purposes. This idea was expressed by Saudi Foreign Minister Adil al-Jubayr. 

He called on Iranian leaders "not to play political games around the tragic accident", and "to show more prudence and sensitivity toward those who lost their lives in this tragedy". Noting the need to wait for the outcome of the investigation, al-Jubayr gave his assurances that, if found guilty, the culprits would be given the due punishment. However, Saudi Grand Mufti Abdul- Aziz Bin-Abdullah al-Sheikh suggested that there would be no culprits because, he said, it was "beyond human power" to manage a huge crowd.

Thus, the tragedy in Mina even further exposed tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia - countries that seek leadership of the Islamic world. The Shi'i republic and the Wahhabi monarchy are demonstrating their readiness to fight each other in a fierce political and diplomatic struggle, which, actually, has already obviously manifested itself in the military field as well. Tehran and Riyadh are effectively involved in a host of armed conflicts as they support different warring forces in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen.

Iran accuses the Saudis of being a vehicle for Western policies and US interests in the Muslim world and of being the main inspirers of the persecution of Shi'is in some countries of the region. Riyadh, for its part, accuses Iran of attempting to organize Shi'i unrest in Bahrain, an ally of Saudi Arabia.

A recent statement by Yahya Rahim Safavi, a senior military adviser to Ayatollah Khamene'i and a former commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, also suggests that the confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran is gaining momentum. Safavi described Riyadh's actions over the tragedy in Mecca as "irresponsible" and predicted that the Al-Sa'ud family would be removed from reign within the next 20 years. It is also clear that Tehran will make extraordinary efforts to deprive Riyadh of an effective instrument of influencing the Muslim world, such as organization of the hajj. This is indicated by the call by the Islamic Republic to give the Organization of Islamic Cooperation powers to conduct all activities within the framework of the annual hajj to the shrines of Mecca and Medina.