Iran: US Should Prove Sincerity by Ensuring Supply of Food, Drugs to Yemenis

“In order to prove that this ceasefire plan is not merely a means for supporting the butchers of the Yemeni people from Yemen quagmire, the Americans need to ensure the forwarding of food and medical items to the victims of the Saudi air raids so that no more Yemeni women and children will lose their lives of hunger and lack of access to proper medicines,” Baqeri Kani wrote on his twitter page on Wednesday.

On Monday, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud presented a so-called peace initiative to end the war in Yemen, which would include reopening Sana’a airport and allow fuel and food imports through Hudaydah port — both of which are under the control of the Ansarullah movement.

The top Saudi diplomat told a news conference that political negotiations between representatives of the Saudi-backed government of Yemen’s former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and Ansarullah movement would resume as part of the initiative.

Al Saud said the initiative would be enforced once the Yemeni sides accepted it.

Reacting to the proposal, Mohammed Abdul-Salam, the spokesman for Ansarullah, said afterwards that it offered “nothing new,” and did not meet the movement’s demand for a complete lifting of the blockade on Sana’a airport and Hudaydah port.

“We expected that Saudi Arabia would announce an end to the blockade of ports and airports and an initiative to allow in 14 ships that are held by the coalition,” he said. 

A “humanitarian right” should not be used as a pressure tool, Abdul-Salam pointed out.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday called for fuel ships to be urgently allowed into the western Yemeni port of Hudaydah, and internal barriers to fuel distribution to be removed as soon as possible.

“As the conflict in Yemen enters its seventh year, Yemenis continue to face a dire humanitarian situation, including the prospect of a large-scale famine, while a significant funding gap remains,” Guterres said.

The UN chief then urged warring Yemeni sides to “seize the opportunity and work with the UN Special Envoy for Yemen [Martin Griffiths] on the way forward in good faith and without preconditions”.

The Iranian foreign ministry in a statement on the occasion of the 6th anniversary of the start of the Saudi-led coalition’s aggression on Yemen called for the end of crimes against the Yemeni people.

The Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign ministry voices severe criticism and hatred about the continuation of this great crime against the innocent people of Yemen at the beginning of the seventh year of military aggression by Saudi Arabia and the so-called coalition countries, the statement said.

Six years have passed since Saudi Arabia and its coalition invaded Yemen, it added, noting that during the last six years, the siege and military aggression have targeted 24 million people in Yemen, and dozens of people die every day due to bombardments, starvation, disease, lack of medicine, and lack of fuel in medical centers.

Even more unfortunate is that this brutal aggression and cowardly siege has not stopped for a moment, even under the outbreak of Covid-19 disease, the statement said.

Undoubtedly, what is happening in Yemen, based on the figures announced by the international authorities and even according to the political and armed supporters of this inhuman aggression, includes all kinds of crimes and offences, international legal prosecution of which is one of the duties of affiliated international institutions and all defenders of freedom and human rights, it added.

Despite numerous claims supporting the halt of aggression, the aggressors are still being supported and the military experts of some countries are hand in hand with Saudis in committing the crimes and murdering the Yemeni people, the statement said.

In such a situation, the simultaneous establishment of a ceasefire and the lifting of the siege will pave the way for the continuation of this humanitarian catastrophe and will facilitate dialogue, it underlined.

Since the beginning of the war, the Islamic Republic of Iran has emphasized that there is no military solution to the Yemeni crisis and that Iran will support a peace plan based on ending aggression, a nationwide ceasefire, ending the occupation, lifting the economic blockade and starting political talks, the statement said.

Yemenis should decide about their political future without foreign interference, it stressed.

The United Nations warned in December that malnutrition in conflict-hit Yemen has reached record levels, saying almost half of the population is experiencing high levels of food insecurity, as time is running out to prevent mass starvation.

The World Food Programme (WFP) warned that the number of people facing the second highest level of food insecurity in Yemen is set to increase from 3.6 million people to 5 million in the first half of 2021.

“Pockets of famine-like conditions have already returned for the first time in two years,” WFP said in a statement, adding, “The number of people experiencing this degree of catastrophic food insecurity could nearly triple from 16,500 currently to 47,000 people between January and June 2021.”

According to the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis, around 45% of Yemen’s population is facing high levels of acute food insecurity.

It noted that within this number, 33% of the Yemeni population are in crisis, while 12% are in emergency.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing the popular Ansarullah movement.

The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has claimed more than 100,000 lives.

The Ansarullah movement, backed by armed forces, has been defending Yemen against the Saudi-led alliance, preventing the aggressors from fulfilling the objectives of the atrocious war.