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Top Houthi official rejects Netanyahu’s claim of Iran seeking to fire missiles at Israel from Yemen

In this undated file photo, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, the Chairman of the Supreme Revolutionary Committee of Yemen, speaks at a press conference in the Yemeni capital city of Sana’a. (Photo via Twitter)

Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement has strongly dismissed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s allegations that Iran is seeking the means to launch precision-guided missiles at the Israeli-occupied territories from Yemen, stressing that such remarks are meant to prolong the Saudi-led military campaign against the Yemeni nation.

Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, the Chairman of the Supreme Revolutionary Committee of Yemen, said on Tuesday that Netanyahu contradicts himself, as he says on one occasion that Iranians have given ballistic missiles to Yemeni forces and claims another time that the Islamic Republic is developing the capacity to produce such armament, Yemen's official Saba news agency reported

“How quickly has Iran’s ambition to develop such missiles been realized that it has even exported them to Yemen?” the top Houthi official questioned.

He further noted that Netanyahu’s remarks during his meeting with US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in Jerusalem al-Quds attests to the fact that the Tel Aviv regime is a dominant partner in the Saudi-led aggression against Yemen.

 Netanyahu had said, “Iran wants to develop precision-guided missiles that can hit any target in Israel within five to ten meters.”

“Iran hopes to use Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen as bases to attack Israel with statistical missiles and precision-guided missiles. That is a great, great danger,” the Israeli prime minister claimed.

Netanyahu then urged US President Donald Trump’s administration to step up sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program and regional activities.

Iran has on occasions rejected accusations that it is providing missiles to Yemen’s Ansarullah movement, saying such claims are merely aimed at diverting attention from atrocities that Saudi Arabia and its allies are perpetrating in Yemen.

Back on April 17, Iran firmly rejected US and British allegations of Tehran sending missiles to Yemen, saying the two are seeking to whitewash their “shameful” complicity in the crisis gripping the war-torn country by leveling “false” charges against others.

“The US and UK complicity in Yemen crisis is shameful,” Iran’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations said in a press release at the time.

The Iranian mission was reacting to remarks by the former American and current British ambassadors to the UN, Nikki Haley and Karen Pierce during a Security Council meeting on Yemen earlier in the day.

Haley claimed that Iran was interfering in the Yemeni affairs and violating the arms embargo on the impoverished state. Pierce also accused Tehran of “non-compliance with Security Council Resolution 2216.”

The Iranian mission, however, said the American and British officials had “repeated their derogatory allegations about Iran to cover up their own role in the disastrous situation created in Yemen. Iran categorically rejects those allegations as baseless propaganda.”

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing the Ansarullah movement.

The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has claimed more than 91,000  lives over the past four and a half years.

The war has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories. The UN says over 24 million Yemenis are in dire need of humanitarian aid, including 10 million suffering from extreme levels of hunger.


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