Mina tragedy to uproot Al Saud ruling family: Iran's official

Head of the Strategic Research Center of Iran's Expediency Council Ali Akbar Velayati slammed Riyadh for its negligence to ensure the safety of Hajj pilgrims last year, saying that the deadly crush of people in Mina will pave the way for the collapse of the Al Saud ruling family.

“The Al Saud regime has made some moves over the past years, which are very rare in the history of Islam,” Velayati, who is also an international adviser to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, said .

The Saudis are directly or indirectly involved in killing and shedding the blood of innocent people over the past years, he said, adding that they are the ones who supported former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the massacre of hundreds of thousands in Iran and Iraq.

Definitely the Mina tragedy, in which many innocent people from Islamic countries, including Iran, were martyred, will “uproot” the Al Saud dynasty, he noted.

Velayati went on to say that Saudi Arabia has always backed extremism and Wahhabism and promoted deviant movements under the name of Islam.

He made the remarks on the occasion of the first anniversary of the deadly crush of people during the last year’s Hajj rituals in Mina, near the Saudi Arabia's holy city of Mecca, which claimed the lives of over 4,700 pilgrims, including 465 Iranians.

In a message on the occasion earlier on Monday, Ayatollah Khamenei strongly slammed “murderous” Saudi rulers for refusing to allow an international probe into last year’s deadly Mina crush, urging Muslims to “correctly understand their (Saudis’) blasphemous, faithless, dependent and materialistic nature".

“Several thousand families from different countries lost their loved ones and their nations were bereaved. From the Islamic Republic, close to five hundred people were among the martyrs. The hearts of their families are still broken and bereaved and our people remain grief-stricken and angry," the Leader said.

“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.”

Ayatollah Khamenei further stressed, "The world of Islam, including Muslim governments and peoples, must familiarize themselves with the Saudi rulers and correctly understand their blasphemous, faithless, dependent and materialistic nature. They must not let those rulers escape responsibility for the crimes they have caused throughout the world of Islam."