Muslims can't continue to pay for Riyadh failures: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Saeed Shehabi, a political analyst in London, to discuss the remarks made by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, saying Saudi Arabia has not made good on its obligations in handling the recent deadly Hajj incident, saying Iran's possible response will be "tough and harsh."

What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: At this point let’s begin with the fact that Saudi Arabia still has not disclosed the nationalities of the dead standing as they say at 769.

Shehabi: This is of course a sad episode in the history of Muslims and in the history of Hajj itself. A week after the tragedy had happened and yet we do not know what has happened. Nobody knows exactly how this tragedy happened and the Saudis are still not giving the world the exact number of victims.

That 769 figure was given on the first day of the tragedy but since then nothing has been forthcoming from Riyadh. It shows that the Saudis have a lot to answer for to the Muslims, to God, to the world, to the conscience, to humanity, to dignity, to decency. They should not keep quiet while the mothers and wives and sisters of victims await their arrival. They do not know whether they will come back in coffins or whether they will come back happily having finished their worship and duty.

Press TV: When we look at the way that Saudi Arabia has acted, they keep making the situation worse and in the case of Iran they are not at this point cooperating with transferring the dead bodies to Iran and Iran’s Leader has come out and he has lashed out at Saudi Arabia on that point. Why is Saudi Arabia not being cooperative at least that is the minimum that they can do at this point?

Shehabi: Well there is hierarchy of failure, structural failure in their management system, in the political system. It is an aging country; it is an aging kingdom that has no place into this world. This is why everything seems to be failing from the health of the King to the health of the society, of the management structure.

Yes, they spent billions of dollars but where are these billions? Where have they gone? Why aren’t they effective? Why do we still see tragedy after tragedy? In the past 30 years I have heard of many catastrophes in which thousands of people were killed. In 1992, 2,500 were killed in al-Ma'asim tunnel and so on and so forth.

The Saudis are simply incapable of dealing with massive tragedy like this. They are not giving the causes, they are not giving the numbers of dead, they are not telling the people and the families of the victim will their beloved ones are going back whether in coffins or whether they will go back in airplanes.

So there is a structural failure in the system of the monarchy of Saudi Arabia that needs to be addressed seriously by the authorities themselves or by the Muslims because Muslims cannot continue paying high price for the failure of a few in Riyadh. 

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