Iran Categorically Rejects Allegations of Smuggling Weapons to Yemen

Kan’ani made the remark on Monday after an Arab outlet claimed that Iran had been smuggling weapons and military equipment from the country’s Southern port city of Bandar Abbas to Yemen’s besieged port of Al-Hudaydah.

“The aggressor coalition and their Western sponsors must be held to account for the crimes they have been committing in Yemen for more than seven years, which have led to the killing of innocent people and the destruction of Yemen’s infrastructure, and have caused the biggest humanitarian disaster of the century,” Kan’ani noted.

The spokesperson stressed that leveling accusations against the Islamic Republic is aimed at deflecting the regional and international public opinion away from the realities on the ground in Yemen.

“The Islamic Republic’s support for the Yemeni people has been political in nature since the beginning of the country’s crisis, and Iran has always backed a peaceful process as well as the United Nations’ efforts for a political solution to the devastating war and the continuation of ceasefire,” the top diplomat stated.

“The continuation of hostile policies and the repetition of threadbare scenarios, despite the [Saudi-led coalition’s] claim about trying to stop the conflict in Yemen, will not lead to a new result in favor of the aggressors,” the official added.

Tehran has repeatedly rejected allegations about sending weapons to Yemeni forces.

“Medicine and medical goods are sent to Yemenis with difficulty; then how could military equipment go through and sent to them,” an Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson had asked.

The spokesman noted that the Yemeni nation has made astonishing progress in the military field and manufacturing weapons and military equipment after facing the Saudi-led aggression.

Saudi Arabia launched a devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in collaboration with its Arab allies and with arms and logistics support from the US, the UK and other Western states.

The objective was to reinstall the Riyadh-friendly regime of Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, and crush the Ansarullah resistance movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of a functional government in Yemen.

While the Saudi-led coalition has failed to meet its objectives, the war has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The conflict has been described by the UN as the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis”, and has resulted in the deaths of 377,000 people, more than two-thirds under the age of five, per UN figures at the end of 2021.

The United Nations brokered a truce between the coalition and Ansarullah, which came into effect in April, and was extended for another two months in early June. The Riyadh-led coalition has on numerous occasions violated the ceasefire.