TEHRAN: With Iranians blocked from this month’s Haj pilgrimage, their supr­eme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued a furious rebuke to Saudi Arabia, saying the Muslim world should challenge its management of Islam’s holiest sites.

“Saudi rulers... who have blocked the proud and faithful Iranian pilgrims’ path... are disgraced and misguided people who think their survival on the throne of oppression is dependent on defending the arrogant powers of the world, on alliances with Zionism and the US,” he said in a statement on his website.

Ayatollah Khamenei accu­sed Saudi Arabia’s ruling family of politicising the pilgrimage, due to begin at the end of the week. They “tremble for fear of jeopardising the interests of the Great Satan (the United States)”, he said.

For the first time in almost three decades, Iranians have been effectively barred from participating in this year’s pilgrimage after talks on logistics and security fell apart.

“Because of Saudi rulers’ oppressive behaviour towards God’s guests, the world of Islam must fundamentally reconsider the management of the two holy places and the issue of Haj,” Mr Khamenei said.

He reserved some of his harshest words for the Saudi government’s response to a deadly stampede during last year’s Haj that killed some 2,300 foreign pilgrims, including an estimated 464 Iranians.

“Instead of apology and remorse and judicial prosecution of those who were directly at fault in that horrifying event, Saudi rulers -- with utmost shamelessness and insolence -- refused to allow the formation of an international Islamic fact-finding committee,” he said.

Published in Dawn September 6th, 2016