While we were busy and occupied with the knifing terror and the search for the Dizengoff Street terrorist, another conflict point in one of the most explosive parts of the world – the Persian Gulf – has been escalating.

The most senior Shiite cleric in Saudi Arabia was executed last week, despite warnings from Iran’s leaders about the act’s ramifications. And indeed, the Iranian response was quick to follow: The Saudi embassy in Tehran and the consulate in Mashhad were torched and ransacked, and as a result, the ties between the two countries were severed.

The deterioration process between the countries began upon the establishment of the Shiite Islamic Republic in Iran in 1979. The rise to power of a radical Shiite religious regime, with pretensions and ambitions which go way beyond Iran’s borders, posed a significant challenge to the Sunni regimes in the region, including the Wahhabi leadership of Saudi Arabia, with its radical Sunni religious line.

The countries experienced quite a few states of heightened tension in the past 37 years, including the Saudi support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War, the death of hundreds of Shiite Iranian pilgrims during the Hajj in 1987, and the terror attack in Khobar in 1996.

Read the article in full at Ynet.