Zarif Rejects Kerry’s Remarks on Iran’s Arms Support for Yemen as "Baseless"
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif slammed US Secretary of State John Kerry for his recent remarks accusing Iran of sending arms to Yemen and rejected his allegations against Tehran as “baseless and unfounded”.
“With these remarks, the US administration has shared the child-killing Saudi regime’s inhumane war crimes against the innocent and oppressed people of Yemen,” Zarif said, according to a report by the Iranian Foreign Ministry on Friday.
Undoubtedly, the US administration should now be held accountable for all the inhumane crimes, said Zarif, who is in Bolivia as part of his tour of Latin American countries.
“Certainly Mr. Kerry knows, better than everyone, that the Saudi government has always tried seriously to keep futile all efforts made to establish ceasefire in Yemen,” he noted.
According to media reports, Kerry claimed on Thursday that arms shipments from Iran to Houthis in Yemen pose a threat to the United States that "cannot continue".
"The threat potentially posed by the shipment of missiles and other sophisticated weapons into Yemen from Iran extends well beyond Yemen and is not a threat just to Saudi Arabia and... the region," said Kerry.
The remarks came as Yemen’s defenseless people have been under massive attacks by a coalition led by the Saudi regime for nearly 18 months but Riyadh has reached none of its objectives in Yemen so far.
Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies have been launching deadly airstrikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement in an attempt to restore power to the fugitive former President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh.
Nearly 9,400 Yemenis, including 4,000 women and children, have lost their lives in the deadly military campaign.
