Iran Rejects US Claims on Yemen Missile Launch as ‘Baseless’

In a statement issued on Thursday, Khoshroo denounced anti-Tehran remarks made by US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley earlier in the day as “irresponsible, provocative and destructive”.

“These accusations seek also to cover up for the Saudi war crimes in Yemen, with the US complicity, and divert international and regional attention from the stalemate war of aggression against the Yemenis…,” the Iranian diplomat noted.

During her press conference on Thursday, Haley appeared standing before parts of a ballistic missile that she claimed Iran delivered to Houthis in Yemen, who then fired it at the Riyadh airport in Saudi Arabia last month.

The full text of Khoshroo’s statement is as follows:

Following a series of baseless accusations against the Islamic Republic of Iran in the past 10 months, the US Ambassador to the UN once again today took the same line accusing the Iranian government of supplying the missile that hit Saudi Arabia on 4 November–an accusation that we categorically reject as unfounded and, at the same time, irresponsible, provocative and destructive. This purportedly evidence, put on public display today, is as much fabricated as the one presented on some other occasions earlier.

The US government has an agenda and is constantly at work to deceive the public into believing the cases they put together to advance it. As part of this agenda, the US President raised the same missile-attack accusation against Iran just hours after the missile launch even before Saudi Arabia did so. Likewise, the US ambassador to the UN last month called for international action against Iran over this missile launch.

While Iran has not supplied Yemen with missiles, these hyperboles are also to serve other US agendas in the Middle East, including covering up for its adventurist acts in the region and its unbridled support for the Israeli regime. It is not a coincidence that the US ambassador held her today’s press conference two days after her claim in her interview with CNN, claiming that the common fight against Iran is much more important for the American regional allies than the plights of the Palestinians and the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

These accusations seek also to cover up for the Saudi war crimes in Yemen, with the US complicity, and divert international and regional attention from the stalemate war of aggression against the Yemenis that has so far killed more than 10,000 civilians, displaced three million, crippled Yemen’s infrastructure and health system and pushed the country to the brink of largest famine the world has seen for decades, as the UN has warned.

While stressing the Yemenis’ right to self-defense, we reiterate that the crisis has no military solution. We take this opportunity to recall the peace plan that Iran formally presented to the UN Secretary-General in 2015 for peacefully settling the conflict and its readiness to contribute towards this goal.