5 years of Yemen war: Iran takes US to task for complicity in Saudi crimes

Five years after the Saudi-led coalition launched a war on Yemen, Iran has reiterated its outright condemnation of the blood-soaked military campaign backed by the United States, stressing that Washington “must be answerable” for its share in the crimes being committed against Yemeni civilians.

News ID: 449750

Date: 25 March 2020 - 18:46

RNA - “The idiotic conflagration enters its sixth year while it has failed to bring about anything but destruction and carnage of innocent and oppressed people,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

The war has reduced entire Yemen to “desolation,” turning it into the scene of “the biggest humanitarian tragedy of the century,” it noted.

Saudi Arabia launched the war on March 26, 2015 to restore power to Yemen’s former Riyadh-backed officials, who had fled the country amid a power struggle at home.

The war — which has killed tens of thousands of Yemenis — has been receiving sustained arms, intelligence, logistical, and political support from Washington and some of its allies, notably the United Kingdom.

The weapons supplied by the US and others have included precision ammunition that the Saudi-led coalition has been deploying indiscriminately against Yemen’s civilian-populated areas.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry further raised the alarm at the dire humanitarian situation in the country, saying as much as 80 percent of the population — comprising around 25 million women and children — were now in need of humanitarian assistance as a result of the war.

It said the US had recently even ramped up the support by notably increasing its presence across the impoverished country to seek military entrenchment there.

The US and its allies, it said, “must be answerable” for their silence concerning the atrocities being committed against Yemen and their share in the aggression.

“This is while the US has proven that its presence in any of the regional countries has brought about nothing but insecurity and plunder of their national assets,” the Ministry noted.

The statement, however, voiced certitude that Washington would eventually end up suffering another defeat in Yemen and leave the country with humiliation.

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