Saudi FM claims about Iran meddling in Yemen incorrect: Afkham

Iran has dismissed as incorrect Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal’s claims about the Islamic Republic’s interference in Yemen as Saudi warplanes continue their brutal military aggression against Yemen.

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said on Monday that the Saudi official speaks about Iran’s interference in Yemen’s internal affairs while his country’s military forces violate international regulations and target infrastructures and homes in the impoverished Arab country.

She added that the Saudi military forces are killing innocent Yemeni people including children and women and do not “listen to legitimate international demands for stopping the war against a defenseless country and nation.”

“Based on its principled stance, the Islamic Republic of Iran wants an end to any military operation against Yemen and urges the dispatch of humanitarian aid including medicine and food [to the Arab country],” Afkham said.

The Iranian spokesperson emphasized that Yemen is an independent country with wise people who do not allow any foreign country interfere in their country’s affairs.

Afkham said the continuation of Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Yemen has failed to settle the country’s problems and will further complicate them.

Smoke and flames rise from Yemen’s Faj Attan Hill following a Saudi airstrike in Sana’a, April 6, 2015. © AFP
“A political approach, Yemeni-Yemeni dialog with the participation of all parties, groups as well as political and social movements, and the establishment of a national unity government are the only solutions to the present crisis and prevention of the killing of innocent people,” she pointed out.

The Saudi foreign minister on Sunday dismissed Iran’s repeated calls to end airstrikes on neighboring Yemen and said Tehran should not interfere in Sana’a.

The Saudi air campaign against Yemen started on March 26, without a UN mandate, in a bid to restore power to Yemen’s fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh.

Yemen’s armed forces and popular committees spokesman, Colonel Sharaf Luqman, said on Monday that nearly 2,600 civilians have been killed in the Saudi aggression so far, adding that Saudi air raids are hitting residential buildings