JEDDAH: Saudi Arabia on Tuesday strongly rejected Iranian accusations that the Kingdom backed the gunmen who killed 25 people at a military parade on Saturday.

“The Kingdom completely rejects the deplorable false accusations by Iranian officials regarding the Kingdom’s support for the incidents that occurred in Iran last Saturday,” a foreign ministry official said according to the Saudi Press Agency.  

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday that the attackers were paid by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and pledged that Iran would “severely punish” those behind the assault.

On Saturday, gunmen fired on a viewing stand in Ahvaz where officials had gathered to watch an annual parade marking the start of Iran's 1980-88 war with Iraq, Reuters reported.

Ahvaz National Resistance, an Iranian ethnic Arab opposition movement which seeks a separate state in Khuzestan province, and Daesh both said they had carried out the attack.

The foreign ministry official said the Kingdom was used to being on the end of “false allegations” from a regime “that has no other option but to lie and place the blame on other countries to cover its shortcomings and failures to fulfill the aspirations of its people.”

The official said Saudi Arabia has a policy of non-interference in the domestic affairs of other countries.

Iran, however, interferes in its neighbors, and is the leading sponsor of terrorism in the region and the world, the official said.