Iran has accused Saudi Arabia of carrying out airstrikes against the Iranian embassy in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, which it claimed left a number of guards wounded and damaged its diplomatic building, although witnesses said the compound was intact and Saudi officials described the claim as propaganda.

Tensions between Tehran and Riyadh have been rising after the Saudi execution of a prominent Shia cleric on New Year’s Day, which has exacerbated the fragile status of a region already badly struck by sectarianism.

The Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, Hossein Jaberi Ansari, condemned what he called a deliberate provocation by the Saudis in Yemen, but the accuracy of the claim was unclear.Media reports suggested that the mission itself was not hit but that shrapnel from an attack on a house nearby wounded embassy guards.

“This deliberate and intentional act by the Saudi Arabian government is in violation of all international conventions and legal treaties regarding the protection and impunity of diplomatic compounds under all circumstances,” Jaberi Ansari was quoted as saying by the website of the state-run IRIB network. “Iran holds the government of Saudi Arabia responsible for this act and wounding of a number of embassy staff and damages made to its building.”

Saudi defence sources said the coalition engaged in airstrikes in Yemen had investigated the alleged attack on the Iranian embassy but pointed to reports from Sana’a saying there was no sign of damage to the premises. Nor was it reported by media backing the Houthi rebels, they pointed out.

“All embassy coordinates in Sana’a have been known to the air force since the start of operations,” one official told the Guardian “This claim is not true. It is propaganda.”

The strain on already difficult relations between Tehran and Riyadh intensified at the weekend after Saudi Arabia executed Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, who was critical of the Al Saud kingdom.



The execution drew worldwide condemnation, including from the UN chief, Ban Ki-moon. In Iran, a predominantly Shia country, hardliners showed their anger by storming the Saudi embassy in Tehran and setting it ablaze. Riyadh and a number of its allies severed or downgraded diplomatic ties with Tehran in response.



On Thursday Somalia became the latest country to cut ties with Tehran, following Sudan, Djibouti and Bahrain. The United Arab Emirates has downgraded relations and Qatar and Kuwait have recalled their ambassador from Iran.

Also on Thursday, the Iranian government banned all imports of goods from Saudi Arabia and voted to extend the suspension of all off-season pilgrimages to the country. Saudi Arabia had previously banned its citizens from travelling to Iran but said Iranians would still be allowed to perform the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, although that now seems unviable.



More than half a million Iranians annually travel to Saudi Arabia for hajj pilgrimage, which Muslims consider a religious duty. Although lesser pilgrimages have been suspended, Iran has not yet said whether its citizens are allowed to perform the greater hajj. Only the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, can ban such visits, and he has yet to issue his verdict.



In Riyadh, Saudi media and officials kept up a barrage of complaints against Iran over the storming of the kingdom’s diplomatic missions in Tehran and Mashhad. An emergency meeting of Gulf Cooperation Council foreign ministers has been called on Saturday in Riyadh. Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, flew to Islamabad on Thursday to drum up Pakistani support.

Jubeir has been on the offensive, noting that Iran executes hundreds of people each year with minimal international response. “Iranians have got away with murder literally for more than 30 years,” he told CNBC.

China has sent its deputy foreign minister to Saudi Arabia, where he met the deputy crown prince and defence minister, Mohammad Bin Salman, before going on to Tehran to try to defuse tensions.



Bin Salman said in an interview with the Economist that a war between Saudi Arabia and Iran would mean “a major catastrophe in the region”. He added: “For sure we will not allow any such thing.”

Asked whether he considered Iran to be “your biggest enemy”, Bin Salman answered: “We hope not.”

Bin Salman said Nimr’s execution was an internal affair. “What is the relationship between a Saudi citizen who committed a crime in Saudi Arabia, and a decision made by a Saudi court. What has this to do with Iran? If this proves anything, it proves that Iran is keen on extending its influence over the countries of the region.”

Jane Kinninmont, a senior research fellow at the international thinktank Chatham House, warned of regional reverberations from the ongoing Saudi-Iranian crisis.



“The escalation is alarming because Iran and Saudi Arabia are on opposing sides of several conflicts in the region including Syria and Yemen,” she told the Guardian. “They also back different factions in different countries that could see an escalation of conflict, notably [in] Lebanon and also Iraq, so this could have an effect in the wider Middle East.

Kinninmont said it was simplistic to blame just one side in the crisis. “The international community also has some responsibility because the regime change in Iraq and the nuclear deal with Iran has changed the regional order and upset a balance which was not perfectly stable to begin with, but which has now been quite destabilised. So I hope that this crisis focuses international attention on the need to follow the nuclear deal with a diplomatic process bringing Iran and Saudis to some kind of detente.”

Iranian officials, including military figures, have stepped up their rhetoric against Saudis in the wake of Nimr’s execution. Hossein Salami, a senior commander of the Revolutionary Guards, used strong language on Thursday to condemn the kingdom.



“The policies of the Saudi regime will have a domino effect and they will be buried under the avalanche they have created,” he was quoted as saying by Tasnim News, which is affiliated to the Guards. “If the Al Saud regime does not correct this path, it will collapse in the near future.”

One day earlier, Iran’s foreign minister, Mohamad Javad Zarif, urged Saudi Arabia to stop “adding fuel to the fire” and said Riyadh had stood opposed to Iran’s diplomacy over the past two years, especially regarding the landmark nuclear agreement.

Saudis are increasingly anxious about Tehran’s reintegration to the international community after the nuclear accord and are unhappy about the mending of relations between Tehran and Washington.



The two countries are rivals in the Middle East and are engaged in proxy wars in various neighbouring countries for a greater share of influence in the region. They are particularly at odds over the conflict in Yemen between Houthi rebels allied with the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who led the country from 1990 to 2012, and forces loyal to the ousted president Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

Iran has aligned itself with the Houthis and has strongly objected to the Saudi airstrikes, which are aimed at halting an advance by the rebel forces and reinstating Hadi.



It was not clear whether the Iranian embassy in Yemen’s capital was still in use by Iranian diplomats or whether, like many other foreign missions in the city, it had been deserted because of the ongoing fighting. The Saudi-led coalition’s spokesman, Brigadier General Ahmed Asser, has alleged that Houthis have used such compounds to launch missile strikes.

Saudis and their Sunni Arab allies view Houthi fighters – who belong to the Zaydi sect of Shia Islam – as Iranian proxies and have accused Tehran of giving them military backing, a charge the Iranians vehemently deny.

Saudi Arabia is backed by Turkey, Egypt, Qatar and the UAE, who all fear Iranian control of Yemen. Persian Gulf Arabs often complain about Iran’s increasing influence in Iraq and Syria, though the exact extent of Iranian support for rebel forces in Yemen is unclear.