IRGC Spokesman Hits Back at US Envoy Haley’s Claim on Yemeni Missile
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The spokesman for the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) rejected recent remarks made by US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley about Iran’s missile support for Yemen and said "everyone knows" that Yemen possesses the technology to build long-range missiles.
Speaking at a meeting with officials of media outlets in the northeastern province of Golestan on Sunday, Head of the IRGC Public Relations Department General Ramezan Sharif said for nearly three years, Saudi Arabia has been dropping bombs on the Yemeni people and using weapons all of which are imported from the US and Europe.
He further pointed to Washington’s attempt to divert public attention from its complicity in the Riyadh regime’s war crimes in Yemen and said, “The US ambassador shows a pipe and says that Iran’s fingerprints are on it.”
“This is while, everyone knows that Yemen received missile equipment from the Soviet Union and North Korea (in the past),” Sharif said, adding that Yemen is among regional countries that possess 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 reply and in a tweet earlier on Thursday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif 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.
