The fallout from Saudi Arabia’s controversial execution of a prominent religious leader continued to draw the attention of United States officials on Tuesday, according to CNN.

A senior official within the State Department told the network that Secretary of State John Kerry was “very concerned with the direction this thing is going,” adding the fact that several Islamic nations had cut diplomatic ties with each other in recent days was “very unsettling” to Kerry.

The situation has devolved rapidly since Saudi Arabia’s state-run media agency announced Saturday that it had executed Nimr al-Nimr, who the U.S. State Department characterized as a Shia religious leader, and 46 others for what it called “terrorist crimes.” Most of Saudi Arabia follows Sunni Islam, a different branch than the one Nimr practiced, and human rights group Amnesty International said Nimr was convicted following a “political and grossly unfair trial.”

In Iran, where most people follow the branch of Islam that Nimr practiced, the news wasn’t received well. CNN reported that protesters responded by attacking the Saudi Arabian embassy, and the situation has only worsened from there as Islamic nations took sides in the dispute and began imposing sanctions and scaled back or altogether eliminated diplomatic conversations.

According to CNN, Kerry was urging Saudi Arabia and Iran to resolve the situation, which was threatening efforts to combat the Islamic State and could potentially have broader impacts.