TEHRAN – The Iranian parliament issued a statement on Tuesday faulting the United States and its Western allies for creating the Ukraine crisis which instead provided an opportunity for Saudi Arabia to execute 81 persons.

The Russian military operation in Ukraine, which many say has resulted from efforts by Ukraine to join NATO, is being abused by Saudi Arabia to kill opponents in large numbers at home, though the Saudi kingdom claims they were murderers and aligned to terrorist groups.

The Iranian parliament said now that the global community remains focused on a commotion created through NATO expansion to the east under the leadership of the United States, “the cruel regime in Saudi Arabia has beheaded more than 80 freedom-seeking Shia and Sunni individuals.”

Elsewhere in its statement, the parliamentarians said, “This regime (Saudi Arabia), which has been destroying Yemen’s infrastructures and committing the most heinous acts against its oppressed people for long years before the eyes of the international community and the self-proclaimed human rights defenders, is committing horrific murders and no protest voice is heard from the satanic throats” of the United States and its friends.   

They added “we as the representatives of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, while condemning this horrific crime and being disappointed by the international bodies toward such crimes, ask the Foreign Ministry of the Islamic Republic of Iran” to do its duties to shed light on this mass execution through “legal measures”.

Saudi Arabia on Saturday executed 81 people. It was the largest known mass execution carried out in the kingdom in its modern history.

According to AP, the kingdom claimed some of those executed were members of al-Qaeda, the Islamic State group and also backers of Yemen's Houthi rebels. 

A Saudi-led coalition has been battling the Houthis since 2015 in neighboring Yemen.

Those executed included 73 Saudis, seven Yemenis and one Syrian. The report did not say where the executions took place.

Saudi Arabia did not say how the prisoners were executed, though death-row inmates typically are beheaded in the country.

An announcement by Saudi state television described those executed as having “followed the footsteps of Satan” in carrying out their crimes.

The kingdom's last mass execution came in January 2016, when the kingdom executed 47 people, including a prominent opposition Shiite cleric who had rallied demonstrations in the kingdom.

In 2019, the kingdom beheaded 37 Saudi citizens, most of them minority Shiites, in a mass execution across the country for alleged terrorism-related crimes. 

Protests erupted Saturday night in the island kingdom of Bahrain — which has a majority Shiite population but is ruled by a Sunni monarchy, a Saudi ally — over the mass execution.