Iran’s Zarif: US Seeking to Cover Up Complicity in War Crimes in Yemen
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif highlighted Washington’s complicity in war crimes committed in Yemen, saying that since the beginning of the war, “the US has sold weapons enabling its allies to kill civilians and impose famine”.
“While #Iran has been calling for ceasefire, aid and dialogue in #Yemen from day 1, US has sold weapons enabling its allies to kill civilians and impose famine,” Zarif said on his Twitter account on Friday.
“No amount of alternative facts or alternative evidence covers up US complicity in war crimes,” he added in his tweet.
In the post on his official Twitter account, Zarif also attached a link to a report on the US complicity in war crimes committed against the Yemeni people.
Zarif made the remarks in response to US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, who claimed that the Islamic Republic has supplied Yemen with ballistic missiles.
During her press conference on Thursday, Haley appeared standing before parts of a ballistic missile that she claimed Iran delivered to Houthis in Yemen, who then fired it at the Riyadh airport in Saudi Arabia last month.
In a tweet earlier on Thursday, the Iranian top diplomat had likened Haley’s speech to former US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s claim in 2003 that Iraq possessed WMD.
Powell’s 2003 speech to the UN laid out the Bush administration’s case for a war in Iraq. Powell in 2016 called the speech “a great intelligence failure”.
In a statement issued on Thursday, Iran's Ambassador to the United Nations Gholam Ali Khoshroo also rejected Haley’s claim as “baseless” and said the accusations are aimed at covering up the Saudi war crimes in Yemen with the US complicity.
Yemen’s defenseless people have been under massive attacks by a coalition led by the Saud regime for nearly three years 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 carrying out deadly airstrikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement in an attempt to restore power to fugitive former President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh.
Over 14,000 Yemenis, including thousands of women and children, have lost their lives in the deadly military campaign.
