Zarif Urges Riyadh to End ‘Shameful’ War on Yemen
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – On the fourth anniversary of Saudi Arabia’s devastating aggression against Yemen, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called on the Saudi regime and its allies to put an end to their “shameful” war on the impoverished Arab country.
“Saudi Arabia & its allies rejected Iran's peace plan for Yemen in April 2015—claiming that victory was at hand within THREE WEEKS. On the eve of the war's shameful FIFTH YEAR, a reminder that it's not too late to stop the nightmare that this war has become,” Zarif tweeted on Tuesday.
Millions of Yemenis took to the streets of the capital, Sana’a, and other major cities on Tuesday to condemn the crimes the Saudi regime and its allies have been committing against them since 2015.
Saudi Arabia’s air campaign against Yemen started on March 26, 2015, without a United Nations mandate, in a bid to restore power to the country’s fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh.
On April 18, 2015, the Iranian foreign minister wrote a letter to then UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon and submitted a four-point peace plan for Yemen, stressing that Tehran was ready to cooperate with the UN “to facilitate and encourage an immediate end to these senseless bombardments and initiation of a genuine dialogue to find a political solution to this tragic crisis.”
He also discussed the formation of an inclusive national unity government as the last step of the plan to halt Yemen’s deadly clashes.
According to a new report by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, the Saudi-led war has so far claimed the lives of around 56,000 Yemenis.
The war has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories.