Iranians protest Saudi execution, torch Tehran embassy

Iranian demonstrators torched the Saudi embassy in Tehran on Saturday in protest of the nearby country's execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a Shiite cleric central to the Arab Spring movement.

Embed from Getty Images

Iframe Code

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Sign up

"The hands of divine vengeance will surely snatch — by their necks — those cruel individuals who took his life," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wrote on his website Sunday, The Washington Post reports.

Nimr's death came as part of a mass execution in Saudi Arabia. Most of the other 47 people killed had been convicted on terrorism charges.