The Islamic Republic has launched a vitriolic attack on Saudi Arabia for the hajj stampede that killed hundreds in Mina last Thursday, but the rest of the Islamic world has not yet shown any support for Iran’s position.
Some Iranian officials have even suggested the Saudis plotted the deaths, although Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi has only accused them of incompetence.
The Iranian denunciation of the Saudis does not appear to have struck chords across the Islamic world. In fact, it might have further exacerbated the severe Sunni-Shia frictions now bedeviling the Islamic community. The virulence of the Iranian attacks on the Saudis could even push Iran further to the fringe of the Islamic community.
As of Tuesday night, no government other than Syria’s had joined Iran in denouncing the Saudis. And the only major organization that the Iran Times found repeating the Iranian charges was the Lebanese Hezbollah.
Other countries did not attack Iran for its charges, but just maintained silence.
The government of Indonesia complained Tuesday that the Saudis were being slow in response to the tragedy, saying its diplomats only received access to the Indonesian dead and injured Monday night, 4 1/2 days after the stampede. But Indonesia did not blame the Saudis for the stampede itself, as Iran did.
Officials in Pakistan and India said they were concerned because the Saudis gave them photos of 1,090 bodies while the Saudis were saying the death toll was less than 800. Saudi Arabia later said the photos were of all 1,090 people who have died during this year’s hajj—769 in the stampede, 111 in the crane collapse September 11 and 210 people who have died of natural causes.
Many lesser hajj officials from several countries have been heard to complain about Saudi slowness in giving them information or access to the victims from their countries. That could eventually lead to broader criticism of Saudi Arabia. But up to this time, Iran has been unable to find support.
The Saudis did not allow Iranian Health Minister Hassan Qazizadeh into Saudi Arabia until Tuesday morning, five days after the stampede. The bodies of the first 10 Iranian hajjis killed in the stampede arrived back in Tehran later that day.
The Islamic Republic has demanded almost hourly this week that management of the hajj be taken out of the hands of the Saudi government and handed over to an international Islamic body, such as the Islamic Cooperation Organization (ICO). The Islamic Republic has been making that same proposal for decades.
The ICO said last week it was in no position to run the hajj. Iyad Madani, secretary general of the ICO, issued a statement that rebuffed Iran. The statement “expressed hope that no party would seek to take advantage of the pilgrimage and the pilgrims, and the incidents that might happen when these crowds of millions perform the same rituals, in a controversial context that would divide rather than unite.”
Even President Rohani joined in the verbal assault on the Saudis. At the very beginning of his speech Monday to the UN General Assembly, Rohani said the many killed the stampede “fell victim to the incompetence and mismanagement of those in charge. Due to their unaccountability, even the missing cannot be identified.”
Rohani said, “Public opinion demands that Saudi Arabian officials promptly fulfill their international obligations and grant immediate consular access for the expeditious identification and return of the cherished bodies. Moreover, it is necessary that the conditions are prepared for an independent and precise investigation into the causes of this disaster and ways of preventing its repetition in the future.”
It was noteworthy that Rohani did not propose taking management of the hajj out of Saudi hands, as Iran has demanded over many years.
Rohani’s remarks were the first sentences of his speech to the UN. In fact, his comments on the hajj were made even before Rohani began his formal speech in the usual UN manner: “Mister president, distinguished secretary general, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen.” That suggested the comments were added at the very last minute.
The day before, Khamenehi demanded that the Saudis apologize for the stampede and accept responsibility. He blamed the disaster on Saudi “mismanagement” and “improper measures.” His main charge against the Saudis was that they were trying to blame others for the tragedy and avoid responsibility.
“The Muslim world has plenty of questions and Saudi Arabia’s rulers, instead of shifting blame, must accept their responsibility in this heavy mishap by apologizing to the Islamic Umma,” Khamenehi said.
“The Muslim world has many questions and the death of more than 1,000 people in this incident is not a minor issue; therefore, the Muslim world must think of a remedy to this issue,” he said. The reference to “thinking of a remedy” was as close as he got to calling for management of the hajj to be removed from Saudi hands. However, before the tragedy he had repeatedly called for just that.
It was unclear why neither Khamenehi nor Rohani called outright for the hajj management to be taken from Saudi hands. There was speculation they were concerned that Iran’s loud hostility to the Saudis was backfiring around the Islamic world, and they had decided to focus on Saudi “incompetence” as a criticism more likely to stick.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir responded that Iran “should know better than to play politics with a tragedy that has befallen people who were performing their most sacred religious duty.” That seemed to resonate with many around the Islamic world who saw the Iranian regime trying to take advantage of a tragedy to score political points.
Al-Jubeir promised a thorough investigation. “We will reveal the facts when they emerge,” he said. “And we will not hold anything back.”
Then it was back to Iran: “I would hope Iranian leaders would be more sensible and more thoughtful with regards to those who perished in this tragedy, and wait until we see the results of the investigation.”
Khamenehi’s remarks Sunday were actually mild for an Iranian official, and appeared to reflect concern that Iran not overplay its rhetoric and isolate itself.
Others didn’t seem to have any such concern.
Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, the military aide to the Supreme Leader, said, “More bitter than the Mina incident was the Saudi king’s irresponsible, inhuman and non-Islamic behavior. We hope that, God willing, Mecca and Medina will be managed by an Islamic government in less than 20 years from now when there won’t be any Saud clan.”
Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani, speaking at the opening the Sunday session of the Majlis, said, “The reports show that the Saudi government is the main culprit,” citing Saudi mismanagement and negligence.
But some of the harshest remarks came from Prosecutor General Ebrahim Raisi, who said what happened was a crime that went beyond mere incompetence. “The Saud clan must know that we will pursue the trial of the culprits through international courts.” The stampede, he said, “is not incompetence, but a crime.”
He didn’t say how Iran could charge the Saudi regime with a crime. Iran is not a member of the International Criminal Court. What’s more, no country can bring a charge against another county in that court. To avoid politicization, only the court prosecutor can file charges. Iran often says it will take issues to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, but it hasn’t followed up on such threats for decades. Furthermore, the court handles disputes between nations, not criminal issues.
The award for conspiracy theories went to Ali-Akbar Velayati, the former foreign minister who is the Supreme Leader’s chief foreign policy adviser. He called the stampede “suspicious.” He said, “This incident and its circumstances are suspicious because some of our senior officials have been killed or gone missing.” One senior Iranian official on the hajj has not been accounted for. That is Qazanfar Roknabadi, who was until recently Iran’s ambassador in Beirut, a very major post in the Islamic Republic system.
At Tehran Friday prayers, the day after the disaster, Ayatollah Mohammad Emami-Kashani said, “Saudis should take responsibility. The world will not accept excuses like the weather was hot or the pilgrims were disorganized.”
The Fars news agency carried a commentary that said, “The wealthy [Saudi] princes are more than happy to see the Mecca tragedy distract the world’s attention from their war crimes in YemenÖ. The House of Saud should never again be allowed to control the hajj pilgrimage in Mecca and Medina.”
The Majlis took up a bill Sunday that would require the government to start a campaign to shift the authority for the hajj from Saudi Arabia to the OIC.
Even former President Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani joined in the denunciations. “The officials of the Saudi government in charge of order in this huge ritual are responsible for the incident and should be answerable to the Islamic world,” he said. But he phrased his condemnation carefully and did not blame the Saudi regime, just the officials in charge of security for the hajj.
Others were more focused on the effort to aid the injured and repatriate the deceased. Lukman Hakim Saifuddin, Indonesia’s religious affairs minister, said his staff in Saudi Arabia was not allowwed to visit hospitals in search of missing Indonesians.
“The Saudi Arabian government has its own regulation, tradition, culture and procedures in dealing with such cases,” Saifuddin said in Mecca. “This has not allowed us enough freedom in our effort to identify the victims.” It was a pointed, but mild criticism.
There was surprisingly little comment from high officials in most governments and no support that the Iran Times could find for the idea of handing control of the hajj over to another group. One exception was the mayor of Ankara, Melih Gokcek, who wrote on Twitter, “Let them deliver the problem to us; let us solve it.” That was taken as a proposal for the hajj to be taken over by the Turks, who ran it for centuries before World War I as the leadership of the Ottoman Empire.