Yemeni FM Hits Back at US Envoy over Anti-Iran Remarks
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Yemeni Foreign Minister Hisham Sharaf deplored recent anti-Iran remarks made by the US ambassador to Yemen and said the Arabian Peninsula country is not a battlefield for other countries.
Sharaf on Saturday described US Ambassador to Yemen Matthew Tueller’s comments about “Iran’s arms support” for Yemen as “irresponsible”, the Arabic-language al-Masirah TV reported.
The American diplomat, in his “far-fetched” remarks, has claimed what has happened in Yemen is the result of Iran’s unlimited support for Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement, he said.
“The US ambassador, with his statements, is forgetting that the Saudi criminal coalition, supported by the US government over the past four years, has been the cause of the deaths, injuries and disabilities of tens of thousands of Yemeni people…,” the Yemeni top diplomat stated.
Speaking to the Associated Press, Tueller accused Iran of “throwing gasoline on the fire” of conflicts across the Middle East, and said, “We see Iran as one of the major forces that is trying to foster instability,”
“Step back for a moment and look at what we have in Yemen. We have a non-state actor, a militia, that has overthrown the government, and yet it is receiving arms, equipment and a support from a state, Iran,” he said.
The remarks come as Yemen’s defenseless people have been under massive attacks by the Saudi-led coalition for more than three-and-a-half years but Riyadh has reached none of its objectives in Yemen so far.
Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out deadly airstrikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement in an attempt to restore power to fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh.
The Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights announced in a statement on March 25 that the war had left 600,000 civilians dead and injured until then. The war and the accompanying blockade have also caused famine across Yemen.