South Asia Center Nonresident Senior Fellow Barbara Slavin writes for Al Jazeera America on Iranian President Rouhani’s criticism of Saudi Arabia:
n the aftermath of a horrific stampede at Mina, Saudi Arabia, near Mecca, that claimed the lives of possibly more than 1,000 pilgrims — many of them Iranian — relations between Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran have reached a new low.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, in New York for the 70th anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly, cut short his trip to return to Iran to meet the coffins of victims. Before leaving, in his address to the General Assembly on Monday, he inserted a blast at Saudi authorities, accusing them of “incompetence and mismanagement” of the Hajj. He demanded immediate consular access for Iran and other nations so that they could identify and return bodies of the victims and called for an independent investigation of the disaster.