Iran will rename a street in its capital after Saudi Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr, whose execution in January prompted protests across the country, ISNA news agency said Thursday.

It said Tehran's city council decided that Naz Street, a central thoroughfare where the Saudi embassy is situated, would be named after Nimr, who was put to death along with 46 other "terror" convicts on a single day in Saudi Arabia.

His execution triggered a diplomatic crisis between Iran and Saudi Arabia after protesters ransacked Riyadh's embassy in Tehran and stormed its consulate in second city Mashhad.

Nimr was a prominent figure in 2011 demonstrations in the kingdom's east.

The deterioration in ties between the Middle East's leading Sunni and Shia Muslim powers raised sectarian tensions across the region and complicated efforts to resolve conflicts in Syria and Yemen.

The rivals were already at loggerheads following a stampede during the 2015 hajj pilgrimage in the Saudi city of Mecca, in which Iran says 464 of its citizens were killed.