On Monday, thousands of Iraqi Shiites took to the streets of Baghdad to protest Saudi Arabia’s execution of Shiite cleric, Nimr al-Nimr. “We demand that the government close the Saudi embassy, kick out the ambassador and boycott all Saudi products,” said one protestor, a sentiment echoed by many. The Saudi embassy in Baghdad reopened just last month, 25 years after Riyadh broke off relations with Iraq to protest Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. And now Iraqi mobs are threatening to burn it to the ground, just as Iranian protestors torched the Saudi embassy in Tehran Saturday as well as the consulate in Mashad.
There were other demonstrations, from Beirut to Dearborn, Michigan, to protest the killing of Nimr, put to death with 46 other Saudis, mostly Sunni Islamists. It seems that no one has shed many tears about putting al Qaeda members to death, but almost everyone agrees that executing a Shiite Cleric who threatened to call for a Shiite secessionist movement and violence (“the military option“) to bring down the Saudi ruling family was a big mistake.
