Tehran “unequivocally and strong rejects…unfounded allegations” leveled at the US at the United Nations Security Council this week that Tehran is arming Yemen’s Houthi militia, Iranian permanent representative to the UN Amir-Saeed Iravani has said.
“Iran regards these allegations as nothing more than a political agenda by the United States to cover up and legitimize its ongoing acts of aggression against Yemen’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Iravani wrote in a letter addressed to the Security Council and the UN General Secretary on Thursday.
“Iran advocates for the peaceful resolution of the Yemen crisis through diplomatic channels and underscores its dedication to maritime security and freedom of navigation. Yet, the fact remains that the United States and its partners are responsible for blatantly violating international law, the UN Charter, and pertinent Security Council resolutions by committing acts of aggression against Yemen’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Iravani added.
The Iranian senior diplomat’s remarks come in the wake of the resumption of Houthi drone attacks targeting merchant vessels and US warships in the Red Sea this week after a ten-day pause. The militia has vowed to continue targeting any ‘Israel-linked’ ships it can reach in the Red, Arabian and Mediterranean Seas and the western Indian Ocean as long as Israel continues the war in Gaza.
The US and its regional allies have been accusing Iran of smuggling weapons to Yemen ever since the foreign-backed escalation of the Yemeni civil war in 2015, claiming the Islamic Republic supplies the militia with missiles, drones and other weapons. Iranian officials and media have not denied the provision of moral support and some military-technical assistance, but vocally dismiss claims that they’ve sent any actual weapons.
The Houthis’ arsenal, which has managed to effectively shut down the Red Sea to the commercial maritime traffic belong to Israel, the US and some of its allies, consists of an eclectic mix of inexpensive, simple-to-produce drone designs, Soviet-era air defense missiles delivered to Yemen in the 70s and 80s, ballistic missiles and customized naval drones. The militia insists that all of its equipment, including an AK-103 assault rifle nicknamed ‘the Obama’, are domestically made.
‘No Pushback’
The failure of the US-led naval coalition assembled in the Middle East to check Houthi missile and drone attacks on commercial vessels, or to degrade the militia’s capabilities in a six-month campaign of air and missile attacks into Yemen, has led to concerns and complaining among some US allies about whether the Western alliance may be a paper tiger.
“The Houthi rebels are becoming more and more aggressive and more and more confident that their aggression will not have any real pushback,” former Australian deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce told Sky News Australia on Friday.
“We didn’t even get a warship up into the Red Sea. I don’t know whether it’s because [the Australian government] didn’t want to, or because they couldn’t. But either of those…is a really bad outcome for Australia, because we are more reliant on that channel than so many others. Because to go from Europe the United States you don’t have to go through the Suez Canal, but you do if you want to go from Europe to Australia,” the politician said.
Houthi leader Sayyed Abdul-Malik al-Houthi told supporters in a speech Thursday that the militia has “hundreds of thousands” of volunteers ready for combat, and reiterated that the militia would continue its military operations against Israel and US interests until the war in Gaza is brought to an end.