Saudi authorities release Iranian cleric arrested for bad mouthing Kingdom, Sunnah
Hojjatoleslam Gholamreza Ghasemian, a cleric and TV presenter affiliated with the Iranian regime and close to Khamenei's household, was recently released after being arrested inMecca for filming a video that insulted the Saudi government and Sunni beliefs, while on Saudi soil.
Ghasemian uploaded the video earlier this week, as he was on pilgrimage in Mecca. He addressed his viewers with a Quranic verse about divine punishment for wrongdoers before launching a sharp critique of conditions in Saudi Arabia's holy cities.
He sarcastically suggested that viewers could "just travel to Makkah and Madinah" instead of going to Antalya, Turkey, claiming that the Saudis, whom he referred to as "merchants and usurpers' of Mecca, have established "gambling houses, prostitution centers, and raunchy concerts" in the holy cities.
He then proceeded to compare these alleged conditions to "the Umayyad workhouses," a historical reference to the dynasty of rulers of the 7th-8th centuries Islamic empire, traditionally viewed in Islamic historiography as having strayed from Islam.
The Iranian cleric emphasized in his video that "what is happening here… represents not just atheism, but the essence of atheism." Ghasemian urged his followers: 'Don't be fooled by diplomatic visits,' referring to Saudi-Iranian relations. He highlighted what he deemed were severe restrictions on pilgrims, suggesting that these conditions signal divine intervention is imminent. Finally, Ghssemian concluded with a prayer that the Shiite "Owners of the House (of Allah) would 'retake' Mecca out of the hands of the 'merchants and usurpers of the Qibla."
Strikingly, Iranian state media reported the arrest as a result of 'comments Ghasemian made regarding the situation in Mecca and Madina', without disclosing any further information regarding the defamatory content of the cleric's address, and without posting the video he made.
Despite Ghasemian's defamatory comments and the backlash they drew on social media, the countries decided to sustain a de-escalated diplomatic atmosphere.
During Ghasemian's arrest, Alireza Enayati, the Islamic Republic's ambassador to Saudi Arabia, lauded Saudi Arabian authorities for 'making every effort to serve Iranian pilgrims.' He added, without referring directly to the arrest, that 'Iranian pilgrims respect the sanctity of these places and adhere to the prevailing laws, and no one accepts obscene and offensive words."
From their part, Saudi state-controlled media outlets maintained a resounding silence, avoiding reports regarding the affair. Ghasemian's quick release may also signify a will to remain on good terms with Iran, despite the perceived grave offense of badmouthing the kingdom.
Ghasemian returned to Iran on Thursday, and local social media accounts showed crowds celebrating his arrival at the airport. However, online users noted that his return from Saudi Arabia at this time means that he was prevented from completing the Hajj, as the rituals are still ongoing.
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The Americans were willing to do a deal, too. 'Trump was offering a huge amount, sanctions relief and a drawdown in U.S. forces, to get him back. It was eventually taken off the table because of changing geopolitics … but there was in any case a very slow response from the Syrian government.' [Assume we tried to confirm this with Trump admin?] By that time, it was clear to the knowledgeable insider, there was no Tice to course, there remain other possibilities about what befell Tice different from al-Hassan's version. He might have been killed or died for another reason in al-Hassan's custody. Keenly aware that he's on the radar of the American authorities, al-Hassan now might be seeking to shift the blame upward — an easy thing to do since Assad is hiding in Moscow and out of America's judicial reach. (In al-Hassan's account, according to Elwood, the Tice family spokesperson, he argued with Assad. ''We shouldn't do this,' he said, 'Tice is a valuable asset.' But Bashar al-Assad was intractable and not listening to reason.') There will also be the suspicion that al-Hassan is trying to win some advantage by peddling spurious information about the only thing that U.S officials want to know. Some eyebrows will be raised at the fact that the FBI has an outstanding $1-million reward for information 'leading directly to the safe location, recovery and return' of Tice while the U.S State Department is offering $10 million for the same. 'Maybe the region is changing, and he's a survivalist,' guessed the U.S. law enforcement official. But the same official was clear: There were no deals. In the wake of the fall of Assad's regime in December, more than a few journalists traveled to Damascus and began combing through Syrian regime prisons in search of Tice. In December, for example, The Times (of London) reported an interview with a 'Syrian undercover journalist,' who claimed to have been detained in the same Damascus prison as Tice, as recently as 2022. The prison, according to the report, was Branch 85 of the general intelligence directorate, in the Kafr Sousa neighbourhood. The undercover journalist said he'd seen Tice a few times 'when he was allowed out to the main corridor for exercise or on his way to be tortured.' The Times shared the information with the Tice family. But if al-Hassan's account is to be believed Tice was never held by the General Intelligence directorate. In any case, according to Syrian human rights groups, there was no such prison in Damascus named Branch 85. In January, CNN followed Austin's mother Debra Tice as she toured another prison formerly controlled by the General Intelligence Directorate, Branch 251, otherwise known as 'al-Khatib' alongside Nizar Zakka, who was publicly co-ordinating the search. Zakka's team led Debra Tice inside a grim underground Damascus prison where she became emotional at the discovery of some graffiti that they thought was written by Tice. 'The Tice family asked us not to show the graffiti itself out of respect for their privacy,' said the journalist, as the camera drew away. But from a different activist video of the same cell it's clear that it simply read 'Mama I love you' — and could have been written by any of the hundreds of foreign fighters who had joined Syria's rebellion. (Asked about her trip to the prison, Debra Tice didn't want to comment.) Bassam Al-Hassan wouldn't be the only one still seeking to deploy Tice for his own advantage; some have accused the new Syrian regime of improperly leveraging Tice's case. In an interview with ITV News in December, Tice's sister Megan gently warned Syria's new leaders that her brother was 'not a pawn in a political playbook.' But whether dead or alive, Tice's fate will continue to be an important political bargaining chip between Syria and the United States. A risible story was published by Al Jazeera in May that Tice had been discovered in a grave in northern Syria along with victims of ISIS; it was immediately denied by the Tice family. The knowledgeable insider with access to both former Syrian regime and U.S. officials, said he learned the report angered some of those U.S. officials because they suspected it had been orchestrated by the Qataris, close allies of Syria's new Islamist government, to help guarantee a meeting between Syria's new President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Trump which took place a few days later. The two most common baseless rumors about Tice's purported location since the fall of the Assad regime have focused on Syria's Coast and the currently restive province of Suwayda. Both areas have seen heavy-handed interventions by forces allied to the new Syrian government to quell rebellions against its authority, involving major human rights abuses by its soldiers against two of Syria's minorities, the Alawi and the Druze. It's conceivable that Tice's alleged location might be deployed as another justification for such incursions, to root out 'regime remnants' and get him the exception of Assad and his former henchmen, no one wants Tice to be dead. But the continued litany of fallacious tips, evidence-free sightings and credulity-defying tall stories seem to represent the triumph of hope over the weight of evidence, which is that this intrepid adventurer turned brilliant warzone journalist has joined the ranks of Syria's disappeared. They also risk perpetuating his family's agony. In the absence of a body or any more definitive proof of his death, that agony seems certain to continue.
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