Iran slams ‘immature’ Saudi crown prince for comparing Khamenei to Hitler

TEHRAN — Iran’s Foreign Ministry has taken aim at Saudi Arabia’s “adventurous” Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, urging him to note the fate of the region’s past autocratic rulers, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said the Saudi crown prince’s earlier remarks calling Iran’s supreme leader the “new Hitler” were “immature, misjudged and worthless” and said no one in the world gave them any regard.

“The mistakes by the adventurous Saudi crown prince, the latest of which is the scandalous intervention in Lebanese domestic affairs, have caused trouble even for their traditional allies.”

The prince said Thursday that Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was the “new Hitler of the Middle East” and must be stopped.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2016. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)

In a wide-ranging interview, Mohammed bin Salman, known in the region by the English acronym MBS, told The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman that he is working to build a coalition of nations to confront Iranian influence in the region.

Iran’s “supreme leader is the new Hitler of the Middle East,” MBS told Friedman. “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.”