Sanctities No Means for Meagre Goals: Iran to Saudi, UAE

“The claim about the Yemenis’ missile attack against the holy Mecca is basically ridiculous,” Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said on Friday.

He urged Saudi and Emirati officials not to resort to such divisive and dangerous propaganda stunts in order to make up for their failed policies and defeats.

The Iranian spokesperson expressed confidence that those who regard their own “criminal goals” as more important than the sanctity of Islam’s holiest shrine, the Kaaba, will “be further disgraced among Muslims day by day.”

Yemeni people’s love for Islamic holy sites is much more than the Wahhabis and Sultans who depend on the US and the Zionist regime of Israel to protect their thrones, he went on to say, as reported by ISNA and translated by IFP.

Qassemi’s remarks came after Yemeni army forces and allied fighters from Popular Committees launched a locally designed and manufactured ballistic missile towards an area deep inside Saudi Arabia on Thursday in response to the Riyadh regime’s atrocious aerial bombardments against the crisis-hit Arab country, Press TV reported.

Yemeni soldiers and their allies fired a Borkan-1 (Volcano-1) missile towards King Abdulaziz International Airport, located 19 kilometers north of the western Saudi port city of Jeddah.

A military source, speaking on condition of anonymity, later told the official Saba news agency that the 12.5-meter-long missile had targeted its target accurately and left massive destruction at the airport.

Saudi media outlets, however, reported that the kingdom’s missile systems intercepted and destroyed the solid propellant and Scud-type missile before it could cause any damage.

The Saudi military also claimed that the Yemeni missile was fired toward the holy city of Mecca, but the Houthi Ansarullah movement has rejected the claim.

Meanwhile, UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed on Friday pointed the finger at Iran.

“The Iranian regime is supporting a terrorist group that fires its rockets on Mecca, is this an Islamic regime as it claims?” he tweeted.

Iran has repeatedly rejected claims that it is funneling arms to the Yemeni Houthi Ansarullah fighters.

Saudi Arabia has been engaged in the deadly campaign against Yemen since March 2015 in an attempt to bring back the former Yemeni government to power and undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement.

The United Nations puts the death toll from the military aggression at over 10,000.