Report: Iran suspends talks with Saudis after mass execution

Iran has decided to temporarily suspend its secret Baghdad-brokered talks aimed at defusing yearslong tensions with regional rival Saudi Arabia, Iranian state-linked media reports, a day after Saudi Arabia carried out the largest known mass execution in its modern history.

The Iranian news website Nournews, considered close to the country’s Supreme National Security Council, reports the government unilaterally paused the talks with Saudi Arabia that have been ongoing in Baghdad over the past year aimed at restoring diplomatic ties.

The report does not give a reason for Iran’s suspension, but it comes after Saudi Arabia put to death 81 people convicted of crimes ranging from killings to ties to militant groups, a group that activists believe included over three dozen Shiites.

Shiites, who live primarily in the kingdom’s oil-rich east, have long complained of being treated as second-class citizens. Saudi Arabia’s executions of Shiites have stirred regional unrest in the past.

Iran, the largest Shiite Muslim country in the world, and Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic ties in 2016 after Saudi Arabia executed prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.