South Asia Center Nonresident Senior Fellow Barbara Slavin writes for Al Monitor on Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s views on the country’s relations with Saudi Arabia, the United States, Russia, and Syria:
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani accused Saudi Arabia of “ineptitude” in its handling of religious pilgrims and suggested that the diversion of Saudi military manpower to Yemen might be one reason for the Saudi failure to prevent a stampede near Mecca on Sept. 24 in which hundreds of pilgrims — including many Iranians — died.
Rouhani, in his first public comments since arriving in New York for the annual UN General Assembly, was judiciously diplomatic and vague about many other topics, including the continued detention of three Iranian-Americans, the future trajectory of US-Iran relations and a road map to a political solution in Syria. But when answering questions from senior representatives of the US media Sept. 25, he acknowledged the poor state of Iranian-Saudi relations even before the tragedy at Mina.