On social media and YouTube, there are reports of heavy fighting and serious clashes in Al-Qatif, one of Saudi Arabia’s oil-richest regions whose inhabitants are predominantly Shia. The unrest is said to have been sparked off by the Iranian government.

In 2016 Saudi Arabia executed Sheikh Nimr, a top Shia cleric, who was a vocal supporter of the mass anti-government protests that erupted in the Eastern Province in 2011, in retaliation for which Iranian protesters ransacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran.