TEHRAN: Iran on Friday denied having anything to do with attacks by Yemen’s Houthis, a day after Saudi Arabia accused Tehran of encouraging the group’s recent escalation against the kingdom.
Since Yemen’s civil war flared up again in July, the pro-Iran Houthis have repeatedly struck Saudi targets, including Red Sea tankers, oil facilities and Riyadh’s international airport, where 13 people were killed in a single attack last week.
A Saudi-led military coalition has supported Yemen’s internationally recognised government for more than a decade. On Friday, it reported intercepting more missiles and drones as the kingdom came under sustained attack from the Houthis.
A day earlier, a Saudi foreign ministry official said Iran had “encouraged” the escalation, a claim Tehran denied.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran rejects any claim that Iran has played a role in Yemeni (Houthi) operations,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said in a statement.
“Yemen’s armed forces act according to their own interests and assessments, and such claims are not credible to those familiar with relations between Iran and its friends. Nevertheless, Iran does not consider an escalation of tensions to be in the interests of any party,” he added.
The Saudi official, Deputy Minister for Public Diplomacy Dr Rayed Krimly, said the Houthis had rejected an offer to meet in Oman at the outset of the latest round of hostilities.
Baqaei, however, reiterated Tehran’s offer to mediate between the two sides, saying Iran “has always been ready to use its good offices to help end the hostilities”.
On Friday, a spokesman for the Saudi-led military coalition said it had “intercepted and destroyed three drones in the southern area and Riyadh… and two cruise missiles over the Red Sea”.
He added that “in the past hours, we intercepted and destroyed a ballistic missile over Yanbu”, a city on the Red Sea coast that is home to the terminus of a major oil pipeline.
Houthi attacks have proliferated since the group launched a lightning offensive in Yemen in September, seizing strategic territory held by government forces along the Red Sea coast overlooking a major chokepoint for global shipping.
The pressure on Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, comes as global energy markets are already rattled by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz at the outset of the wider Middle East war in February. –Agencies
