In three days, relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran have gone from tense to disastrous — and that may reverberate across the Middle East and worldwide.

Within hours, Bahrain and Sudan joined Saudi Arabia in severing ties with Tehran and announcing it would expel Iranian diplomats within 48 hours. The United Arab Emirates announced it was downgrading its diplomatic team in Tehran.

Saudi Arabia’s decision to break relations with Iran can be traced back to Saudi Arabia’s Friday execution of a top Shiite cleric — one of 47 people executed that day by Saudi officials.

The execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr sparked protests in the region. In Iran, protesters attacked and ransacked Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashad. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, threatened divine retribution for the killing of the cleric, whose only crime, he said, was criticizing the Saudi goverment.

Riyadh gave Iranian diplomats 48 hours to leave Saudi Arabia after Iranian leaders condemned the execution of a popular Shiite cleric, Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, and after protesters stormed the Sunni kingdom’s embassy in Tehran in anger over his death.

Saudi Arab’s geostrategic and geopolitical concerns about Iran

When popular uprisings began to spread across the Arab world in 2011, Saudi Arabia felt its foundations shake. At its most vulnerable point, it watched as the US withdrew support from longtime ally Hosni Mubarak and choked as it saw anti-regime demonstrations building in neighbouring Bahrain. Seeing Iran’s hand behind a legitimate popular opposition movement, Saudi Arabia sent tanks across its causeway with Bahrain to crush the uprising and to prevent Iran from establishing itself on Saudi Arabia’s eastern border. But Saudi Arabia seemed unable to shoot down Iran’s rising star.

As the Syrian rebels failed over and over again to receive the aid they needed from the international community, Iranian support enabled President Assad’s resurgence in the Syrian civil war. And the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq precluded serious efforts to remove Assad from power, and strengthened Iran’s hand as the convener of Iraqi Shia resistance forces in Iraq.

Saudi Arabia feels that the US has abandoned any attempt to check Iranian power in the Middle East. So if Iran is to be stopped, Saudi Arabia will have to take matters into its own hands – starting with building a coalition to defeat Iran in Yemen. Factually seen, Iran did not create the militias in Iraq; Iraqi Shias joined militias in order to defend themselves and their country

Saudi has been jostling with Shia Iran for influence across the Muslim world and especially in the Middle East. The countries are literally at war in Yemen, where Iran is backing the Zaidi Shia Houthi rebels who have been targeted by Saudi-led airstrikes. They are also at each other in Syria, where an unofficial coalition of Iran, Russia, Hezbollah and President Bashar al-Assad’s forces are fighting Saudi and western attempts to remove the Alawite Shia minority from power. The situation is complicated by the Daesh — while the Saudis and their Gulf partners are against the IS, evidence of links between them too has been surfacing regularly.

The Saudis have been especially nervous since relations between Tehran and Washington took a positive turn recently. While Iran, the leader of Shias across the world, hopes to take over the leadership of the entire Muslim world, Saudi would like to sharpen the historical Shia-Sunni divide so that the focus remains on the sectarian differences — and allows the perpetuation of the control of the ruling Saudi family over the country that houses Islam’s holiest shrines.

Reaction of the Arab allies and other Muslim states

“Bahrain has decided to end diplomatic relations with Iran because of its continuous interference in the affairs of the kingdom, and also of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council),” and official statement said.

Also on Monday, Sudan decided to expel the Iranian ambassador and the whole Iranian diplomatic mission.

It also decided to recall its envoy from Tehran.

Sudan stressed its condemnation of what it sees as Iranian interference in the Arab region and inaction to protect the Saudi Embassy and Consulate in Iran.

At a less tense level, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) decided on Monday to downgrade its diplomatic relations with Iran and reduce the number of Iranian diplomats in the country.

The UAE Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it has recalled its ambassador to Iran Saif Al Zaabi in support of Saudi Arabia.

This step was taken “in the light of continued Iranian intervention in the internal affairs of the Gulf and the Arab world” that has recently reached unprecedented levels, the statement said.

It said that the natural and positive relations among nations should be based on mutual respect for sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs.

“The smaller Gulf states are worried they will get caught in the middle,” said Michael Stephens, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London. “It worries them greatly that things could go badly.”

Some countries, like Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan, are already battling their own domestic insurgencies. Others are keen to guard their strategic interests or to keep the door open to trade with Iran while there is a prospect of American sanctions being lifted.

Qatar, which shares with Iran access to the world’s largest natural gas field in the Persian Gulf, has yet to declare its hand. Oman has also been quiet, sticking to its longstanding position of neutrality on Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The Palestinian Authority issued a statement after the execution of al-Nimr saying that it stands alongside the Saudis in their fight against “terrorism.” The Saudis are the largest donor to the Palestinian Authority in the Arab world, providing them some $200 million annually. The PA, and the Fatah faction that leads it, has had a strained relationship with Iran because of its support of its rival, Hamas.

The western concerns

The European Union’s foreign-policy chief, Federica Mogherini, appealed Sunday for calm and told Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, that the acrimony between Riyadh and Tehran risked derailing diplomacy on Syria.

“The international community and the main regional actors are actively working together to support a political solution for the crisis in Syria and to join forces against [terrorist] groups, and these efforts should not be jeopardized by new instability,” Mogherini said in a statement.

Western diplomats and analysts said the tensions would only bolster hardliners in both countries, feeding a mounting Sunni-Shiite conflict playing out in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

A senior U.S. administration official acknowledged that the heated rhetoric between Riyadh and Tehran represented yet another hurdle for diplomacy on Syria. The diplomatic rift between Saudi Arabia and Iran could complicate OPEC’s efforts to calm oil markets if Iran begins exporting up to one million barrels a day of extra crude once Western sanctions are lifted as expected early this year.

The impact on oil prices

Oil prices have fallen over the past year to levels not seen since the financial crisis because supplies have far outstripped demand.

Over that time, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries abandoned its traditional role of propping up prices with production cuts. But officials in December left open the possibility of an emergency meeting early this year when the impact of Iranian oil could be assessed. Now, with OPEC’s two most powerful members—Saudi Arabia and Iran—at odds, hopes for an agreement to regulate production appear to have dimmed even further, said an oil industry official in a Persian Gulf Arab country.

Response by Turkey and Pakistan

Turkey has asked Iran and Saudi Arabia to calm tensions in their diplomatic crisis, saying the hostility between the two key Muslim powers would only further escalate problems in an explosive region.

“We want both countries to immediately move away from the situation of tension that will obviously only add to the already severe tensions existing in the Middle East,” Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said in Ankara’s first reaction to the crisis on Sunday.

“The region is already a powder keg,” Kurtulmus, who is also the government spokesman, said after a cabinet meeting, quoted by the Anatolia news agency. “Enough is enough. We need our peace in the region.”

As for Pakistani government’s response to the crisis,on Tuesday, the Pakistani prime minister’s foreign affairs adviser, Sartaj Aziz, warned Parliament that the crisis posed a “grave danger” to the Muslim world. He did not hint at any possible diplomatic moves against Iran, emphasizing instead that Pakistan would work toward “easing tensions.

The Saudi envoy statement in the UN

Saudi Arabia’s U.N. ambassador says his country backs efforts to bring peace to Syria and Yemen and its break in diplomatic relations with Iran should have no effect on upcoming talks.

Ambassador Abdallah al-Moualimi told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York that Saudi Arabia, which supports Syria’s opposition, will attend the next round of talks on Syria, scheduled for Jan. 25 in Geneva.

Iran, which backs the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad, has not said whether it will attend.

To conclude

The world community on Monday urged Saudi Arabia and Iran to observe restraint after tension over the execution of a prominent cleric Nimr Al-Nimr along with 46 others by the Saudi government.

The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, told the Saudi foreign minister on Monday that Riyadh’s decision to break off diplomatic ties with Iran was extremely troubling, a United Nations spokesman said.

“The secretary-general reiterated that the attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran was deplorable, but added that the announcement of a break in Saudi diplomatic relations with Tehran was deeply worrying,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters

The Arab League, and the OIC must make a joint effort to de-escalate the tensions. Moscow “is willing to play, if necessary, a role as a mediator in the settlement of existing and emerging discords between these countries,” the unnamed diplomat added.

However, it was not clear from the report if Moscow had made the mediation proposal to either side.

Earlier on Monday, China, which relies on Saudi Arabia for oil supplies, also expressed concerns over the escalating conflict, calling for the two nations to “maintain calm and restraint.”

“We hope the relevant parties can … properly resolve their differences through dialogue and consultation and jointly safeguard regional peace and stability,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying reportedly said.

India can also play a significant role as a mediator between the two sides since it holds its sway in the GCC block; and also charges its influence in Iran. If not timely mediated, the ongoing rift between Tehran and Riyadh  may escalate the proxy wars in the Middle eastern region. The growing rift may also cause great damage to the cause of unity of ‘great alliance’ to act as a bastion against the Daesh forces. Iran and Saudi Arab are two important arms of the Muslim community.The Muslim world cannot afford to divorce its relationship with any one of them.Therefore, to utilize the role of multilateral diplomacy via ‘ummah forum’, is the need of the hour.