Yemenis would have conquered Riyadh if Iran had been able to provide military aid: Houthi official

Rasa - The president of the Houthi Revolutionary Committee has strongly dismissed allegations that Iran is providing arms to Yemeni forces in the fight against the Saudi-led military aggression against Yemen, stressing Yemeni army soldiers and fighters from allied Popular Committees would have conquered Riyadh if Iran had been able to provide military aid.

News ID: 437056

Date: 01 April 2018 - 22:06

RNA - “If we had [had] the alleged Iranian support, we would have been in Riyadh today, even if we had [had] the alleged Iranian technology, we would have targeted them from the first day,” Mohammed Ali al-Houthi said in an exclusive interview with France 24 television news network.

He added, “We will continue to target (Saudi Arabian Oil Company) Aramco and vital Saudi facilities to have a deterrent power against the arrogant enemy.”

He then called on Britain, European countries as well as the United States to stop their support for Saudi Arabia so that the Riyadh regime would cease its aerial bombardment campaign against Yemen.

Houthi further noted that Yemeni soldiers and their allies were currently deployed to areas in close proximity to Saudi Arabia’s southwestern border regions of Najran, Jizan and Asir, emphasizing that the Ansarullah movement was formulating a long-term attrition policy against the House of Saud regime.

The senior Ansarullah official stated that all options were on the table to counter the Saudi-led aggression against his impoverished and conflict-plagued country.

“We will use all available means; and a vast array of options is at our disposal to respond to the attacks. It’s a shame to condemn Yemeni retaliatory missile attacks at the same time as keeping mum on crimes being perpetrated by the Saudi-led aggressors. If the enemy continues to pound our cities and our siege remains in place, we will certainly demonstrate greater military power,” Houthi highlighted.

He said, “We are developing and manufacturing our own missiles on the basis of Russian and North Korean technologies. The projectiles have no Iranian know-how incorporated in.”

Iran has repeatedly denied allegations of delivering missiles to the Houthis in Yemen, saying, however, that it would have done so had it not been for a Saudi blockade against the impoverished country.

The Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights announced in a statement on March 25 that the Saudi-led war had left 600,000 civilians dead and injured since March 2015.

The United Nations says a record 22.2 million Yemenis are in need of food aid, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger.

According to Press TV, a high-ranking UN aid official recently warned against the “catastrophic” living conditions in Yemen, stating that there was a growing risk of famine and cholera there.

“After three years of conflict, conditions in Yemen are catastrophic,” John Ging, UN director of aid operations, told the UN Security Council on February 27.

He added, “People's lives have continued unraveling. Conflict has escalated since November driving an estimated 100,000 people from their homes.”

Ging said cholera had infected 1.1 million people in Yemen since last April, and a new outbreak of diphtheria had occurred in the war-ravaged Arab country since 1982.

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