Yemen being destabilised with Iran’s help: Saudi Arabia

SANAA/TEHRAN/KUWAIT CITY: The Houthi rebels and their ally, former president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, “decided with the support of Iran to destabilise Yemen,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on the sidelines of a Syria donors conference in Kuwait, “We strongly object to the military solution in Yemen. We believe that the Saudi military attack against Yemen is a strategic mistake.”
Explosions lit up the skies over Yemen’s capital overnight in the heaviest bombing raids yet in a six-day operation led by Saudi Arabia, which hit out at Iran for supporting Zaidi Shiite rebels.
The coalition has vowed to keep up the strikes until the Houthi rebels end their uprising against President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi who has fled to Saudi Arabia.The fighting has sent tensions between Sunni Arab nations and Shiite Iran soaring, even as marathon nuclear talks between Tehran and world powers in Switzerland enter a crucial final phase.
“We are not warmongers but when they beat the drums of war, we are ready,” Saud told the Shura Council advisory body, according to its Twitter account.Kuwait’s Al-Watan newspaper launched a vitriolic attack against Tehran, describing the air strikes as “the biggest blow to Iran in decades”.
The coalition campaign “raises hopes of a historic success for the Arabs and a rout of one of their worst enemies: the Persian state,” added the daily.Huge blasts were heard overnight in Sanaa when the coalition forces hit a missile depot belonging to the renegade Republican Guard, which is loyal to former strongman, Saleh.
“Sanaa lived through a day of terror due to the continuous bombing from early Monday until this morning,” said Assem al-Sabri, a 28-year-old resident. “We couldn’t sleep from the sounds of explosions,” he told AFP.
The missile depot blast rocked a southwestern district of Sanaa and flames billowing from the site were seen by residents across most of the city.“The bombing was the heaviest I have ever heard in my life. The explosions lit up the skies of Sanaa,” said another resident, 30-year-old Amr al-Amrani.
Early Tuesday, air strikes targeted two camps held by Houthi rebels and allied Republican Guard soldiers in the southern town of Daleh. Columns of smoke rose from the area, witnesses said.
Coalition warplanes also raided an airbase belonging to a Republican Guard brigade in the southwestern city of Taez, witnesses said.For the first time since the coalition operation began, warplanes also bombed renegade troops in the Zaidi Shiite-populated city of Dhammar, a stronghold of the Houthi rebels south of Sanaa.
They also hit another armsdepot north of the capital, according to witnesses.After an air strike killed dozens of people at a camp for displaced people in the northwest Yemen on Monday, the two sides traded accusations over the incident. “The coalition was targeted by militiamen from a residential area and coalition planes had to respond” to the fire, coalition spokesman Ahmed Assiri told reporters in Riyadh.
“The Houthis are seeking to place their forces among the people and the coalition is doing everything it can to avoid civilian casualties.”The rebel-controlled health ministry condemned “the Saudi aggression on Yemen that left many innocent victims, children, women, and civilians” dead.
The Houthis and allied renegade military units have overrun much of Yemen and prompted Hadi to flee what had been his last remaining refuge in Aden.
Dozens of people have been killed in several days of clashes in the city, and Hadi’s aides have said he has no immediate plan to return there.The coalition, which accuses Iran of backing the rebels, has imposed a sea blockade around Yemen.
Hadi has branded the Houthis the “puppet” of Tehran, and the prospect of an Iran-backed regime seizing the impoverished Arabian Peninsula state has alarmed many countries in the region.
Iran has warned that the Saudi “attack” on Yemen endangered the whole region, calling for an immediate halt to the military operation against rebels.
“The fire of war in the region from any side... will drag the whole region to play with fire. This is not in the interest of the nations in the region,” Iran Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said.
“Military operations must stop immediately” to open the way to a “political solution,” he said.Abdollahian said Iran sees the intervention in Yemen as “external aggression” that will foment extremism in the region.
But Tehran and Riyadh are “capable of cooperating to strike a compromise in Yemen,” and the same can apply to a solution in Syria, he added.
His remarks came shortly after Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal denounced Iran’s “support” for rebels seeking to “destabilise” Yemen, insisting that the Kingdom’s rulers are not “warmongers”.
Saudi Arabia fears that the rebels, who seized power in the capital Sanaa in February, could take the country into the orbit of Iran.
Moreover, Iran sent a shipment of non-military aid to Yemen on Tuesday, the first since a Saudi-led coalition last week started air strikes against Houthi rebels, state television reported.
“The shipment being sent includes 19 tonnes of medicine and health equipment, vital items and two tonnes of food,” said Dr Nasser Charkhsaz, director of the Iranian Red Crescent. The report said the shipment was sent by air, but it did not say to where.
Iran, meanwhile, rejected claims that it had sent arms to Yemen, where the Houthis are under attack from the air. Such reports are “completely manufactured and utter lies”, ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham was quoted on the official IRNA news agency as saying.
“These claims cannot in any way justify a military strike on Yemen,” she said. “Since our (aviation) agreement we have had a few civilian flights carrying medical and hygienic aid to Sanaa and the cargos have been delivered to Yemen’s Red Crescent.”
Afkham said Iran was ready to help treat the wounded in Yemen.The Saudi-led coalition has vowed to keep up its bombing raids until the rebels abandon their insurrection against President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, who has fled to Riyadh.