ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iran has slammed Saudi Arabia’s crown prince as “immature” for his comment comparing Iran’s supreme leader to Hitler.
The spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, Bahram Qasimi, said on Saturday that the world does not give weight to Riyadh because of the "immature, unwise, and ridiculous remarks of the Saudi crown prince."
Saying the Saudi prince is trying to following the footsteps of Middle Eastern dictators, Qasimi warned, “I strongly advise him to think for a while about the eventual fate of these dictators," according to state-run IRNA news agency.
In an interview published in the New York Times on Thursday, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman said that Saudi Arabia will use its muscle to stop growing Iranian influence in the Arab world.
Iran's "supreme leader is the new Hitler of the Middle East," Bin Salman told the newspaper. "But we learned from Europe that appeasement doesn't work. We don't want the new Hitler in Iran to repeat what happened in Europe in the Middle East."
The two regional rivals are competing against one another in a number of countries in the Middle East such as Yemen where the Saudi Kingdom supports the internationally recognized Aden-based Yemeni government against the Iranian-backed Sanaa-based Houthi rebels. The Saudi intervention began in March 2015 and has caused a humanitarian crisis, leaving millions without access to food or medicine.
The Sunni Kingdom has a persecuted Shiite minority while Shiite-Iran has a significant persecuted Sunni minority. The two, however, have avoided direct confrontation, mainly focusing on proxy wars in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon, among others.
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