Iran’s Top Security Official Blasts Saudi Officials for Sticking to Worn-Out Thoughts

Saudi politicians are suffering from a too old mindset, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani said after Saudi-led coalition planes dropped leaflets in Yemen’s central Taizz province in an effort to demonize Iran.
Last week Saudi-led coalition planes dropped leaflets in Taizz asserting the coalition’s support for any Yemeni person opposed to “Iranian influence”.

Local residents said numerous leaflets – which read “The goal of coalition forces is to support the Yemeni people against Iranian influence” – had been dropped in the province.

In response, the Iranian top security official on Tuesday mocked at the Saudi war tactics, saying the move was done by the western states in the Cold War era to intimidate their citizens from communism and prevent any kind of freedom-seeking move under the same pretext.

“But this tactic is used fool-heartedly; handing out such campaign fliers does not correspond to the reality and facts on the ground and they would not intimidate the Yemeni people. Rather, they would say that our Iranian brothers have been the only ones who have rushed to our aid and Iran is the only country that has treated our wounded,” Shamkhani said.

“Hence, this would not make the Yemeni people distance themselves” from Iran, he added.

Shamkhani further said the Saudis’ “upside-down and wrong use of the already failed lesson of the West signifies the worn-out mindset and thinking of the Saudi politicians”.

Saudi Arabia accuses Iran of supporting the Houthis’ Ansarullah popular movement in Yemen. Iran denies the Riyadh allegations, stressing that it only supports popular demands of the people in all the regional states, including Bahrain and Yemen, where people have revolted against the foreign-backed rulers to take their fate into their hands.