The propaganda war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, bitter rivals on opposite sides of the Middle East’s biggest current crises, is hotting up, with near daily exchanges and insults between ministers and state media outlets.

In the past week alone senior figures from both countries have cast diplomatic niceties to the desert winds and attacked each other publicly. Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, said on Monday that Iran was “occupying Arab lands” in Syria - where it supports Bashar al-Assad. Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, retorted that the Saudis were in no position to complain as they were “occupying” Yemen - where Tehran backs the Houthi rebels.

Iran ramped up its anti-Saudi rhetoric after the recent hajj tragedy in Mecca but it went on the offensive at the start of the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen in March, with a Revolutionary Guard commander predicting the “collapse of the House of Saud … in the footsteps of Zionist Israel”.

Saudi-affiliated media began highlighting the situation in Ahwaz (Khuzestan or Arabistan), in south-western Iran, where Arabic-speaking citizens complain of discrimination, a subject clearly calculated to raise hackles in Tehran.

In April, the Saudi state-run satellite channel al-Ekhbariya aired a documentary describing Ahwaz as “under occupation by Persian forces.” Khalaf Ahmad al-Habtoor, a prominent Emirati businessman, called for “the liberation of Arab Ahwaz” from Iran. Saudi and Iranian social media users routinely vilify each other under provocative hashtags. Iranian clerics condemn Saudi Wahhabi doctrine while their Saudi counterparts lambast Shia “polytheists.”

Iranian-Saudi animosity dates to the 1979 revolution and Saudi backing for Iraq during its eight-year war with Iran. It worsened after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and again during the Arab spring as strategic rivalry took on an explicitly sectarian tinge – Sunni Saudis vilifying Iranian Shias or Zoroastrians and vice versa.

Saudi propaganda contrasting the different use of cranes in Mecca and Ahwaz Photograph: Twitter/Guardian

But mutual hostility has escalated sharply since 1,849 pilgrims died in the Mecca stampede – nearly 500 of them Iranians. Tehran’s no-holds-barred attacks on the Saudis touched the rawest of nerves – the Muslim legitimacy the Al Saud dynasty claims as custodian of the two holy mosques – King Abdullah’s formal title.

The war of words is linked to last July’s nuclear agreement, seen by the Iranians as their ticket out of international isolation and by the Saudis as a reckless, short-sighted concession by a weak US president. Riyadh and its Gulf allies dare not, like the Israelis, directly oppose the deal, but rather emphasise non-nuclear issues such as Iran’s behind-the-scenes role in Yemen and Bahrain, as well as their more overt involvement in Syria and Iraq. Independent experts are sceptical about Saudi claims to have captured Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters advising Houthi rebels.

Iranian media regularly condemn what they describe as Saudi support for al-Qaida and Islamic State and have denounced a “psychological war” being waged by the Saudis. The Saudis, in turn, accuse the Iranians of peddling falsehoods through their state media and outlets in Lebanon. Jubeir described Iran’s role in the region as “nefarious” and the war in Yemen as a struggle “between good and evil”,



In the summer, Riyadh announced plans to launch a Persian-language TV service to counter Iranian propaganda broadcast in Arabic on its al-Aalam channel, which has reportedly been targeted by the Saudis.

Propaganda and diplomacy can co-exist. Earlier this month the Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, appealed to the Saudis in a round of media interviews: “We and Arabs in the region are in one ship, and if this ship sinks, everyone will drown together, and there is no one that will save us. I hope that our Arab friends pay attention to this principle and know that our future is the same and understand that Iran is with them to reach an oasis of stability.” But he was ignored – because the Saudis were hearing other, less emollient Iranian voices at the same time.



“Escalation of tension could lead to a Saudi decision to exclude Iranian pilgrims from the hajj,” warned the analyst Abbas Aslani. “This could ultimately result in both countries likely finding each other mired in ever more tension and more proxy conflicts. The end result? A more volatile region.”



For a while there were expectations that things might improve under President Hassan Rouhani, who replaced the abrasive Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last year. There was a precedent in the thaw that took place when the reformist Mohammed Khatami was in power.

“The Saudi-Iranian relationship is as bad now as it’s ever been,” is the verdict of the historian Ali Ansari, of St Andrews University. “We had hoped that under Rouhani there might be some kind of detente with the Saudis. But the regional dynamic has made that impossible. I don’t think it will be resolved any time soon.”



By raising the Ahwaz issue, Ansari argued: “The Saudis are going back to what Saddam Hussein did in the 1980s. It is certainly calculated to inflame nationalist tensions in Iran. It’s not a sectarian thing. It’s an Arab-Persian thing. Both sides are involved in a deteriorating cycle of mutual hostility. The Iranians conflate the Saudis with Isis but they also conflate the Americans with the Saudis. They see one big conspiracy and that’s why this whole situation is so dangerous.”