Tehran yesterday strongly denied that it had supplied weapons to Yemeni rebels that they used in attacks on its archfoe Saudi Arabia as alleged by Riyadh and Washington.
“We have no arms link with Yemen,” Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Bahram Ghasemi told the ISNA news agency, after Saudi Arabia said it had intercepted a rebel missile over Riyadh on Tuesday that it suggested was “Iranian-manufactured.”
“The accusation that Iran gives weapons to various groups is rejected and we strongly deny it,” he said. ““Yemen is in a blockade and such possibility does not exist anyway.”
Photo: Reuters
Weapons used by the rebels “to defend against violation and non-stop attacks” are leftovers of previous governments, Ghasemi said.
“There isn’t even the possibility of sending humanitarian aid,” he said.
Saudi Arabia on Tuesday said it shot down a ballistic missile over Riyadh fired from Yemen by Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who announced that the target was the official residence of King Salman.
US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley described the strike as bearing “all the hallmarks of previous attacks using Iranian-provided weapons.”
She said Washington would be discussing options for UN Security Council action against Tehran, although that immediately drew strong reservations from Moscow.
The audacious attack aimed at the heart of Saudi Arabian power follows the downing of another missile last month near Riyadh airport that triggered the tightening of a Saudi-led blockade on Yemen.
For the past three years, Saudi Arabia has led a military campaign involving airstrikes and ground troops against the Houthis, who seized the Yemeni capital from the internationally recognized government in 2014.
The kingdom accuses the Shiite rebels of being a proxy for its archfoe Iran, which vehemently denies arming the insurgents.
An Agence France-Presse correspondent in Riyadh heard a loud explosion at 10:50am GMT, shortly before King Salman was due to oversee the unveiling of the Saudi Arabian annual budget.
“The missile was aimed at populated residential areas in the Riyadh area, and — thank God — was intercepted and destroyed south of Riyadh without any casualties,” the official Saudi Press Agency quoted Turki al-Maliki, a spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, as saying.
“The possession of Iranian-manufactured ballistic weapons by terrorist organizations, including the Iran-backed Houthi militia, is a threat to regional and international security,” al-Maliki added.
More than 8,750 people have been killed since Riyadh and its allies joined the government’s fight against the Houthis in 2015, triggering what the UN has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
“In exchange for a thousand days of bombardment with internationally banned weapons, there has been a thousand days of steadfastness in which our people have demonstrated that their resolve will not be broken,” rebel chief Abdulmalik al-Houthi said on Tuesday.
“Today our people reached the heart of Riyadh — the government palace — with a ballistic missile,” he said.
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