Saudi, UK Anti-Iran Claims, Smokescreen for Terror Support: Iran

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said on Sunday that remarks made by British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir in a joint press conference in Riyadh against Iran were baseless and an attempt to divert attention away from their support for Takfiri terrorism and numerous and extensive crimes against humanity in the war on Yemen.

There is no doubt that despite the opposition of world public opinion and protests by conscientious people across the world against the provision of weapons by Britain for use in the war against the Yemeni people, statesmen in London still insist on the sale and dispatch of such deadly arms to the countries involved in the aggression against Yemen and supporters of terrorists, he added.

Qassemi further dismissed as ridiculous claims by the Saudi foreign minister about Iran’s support for al-Qaeda and Takfiri terrorists, saying the Islamic Republic pursues independent security strategies and has no connection with terrorist and extremist ideologies.

Addressing the joint presser on Sunday, Johnson, who had told a conference in Rome that Saudi Arabia and Iran were “puppeteering” in the Middle East by supporting rival sides in regional conflict, said he was concerned about the suffering in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition has been accused of rights abuses.

In his presser with Johnson, Jubeir, without providing any evidence, accused Iran of supporting terrorism and interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. He also claimed that Tehran had ties with al-Qaeda terrorists and that the group’s leaders had fled to and been living in Iran since 2001. Johnson, meanwhile, said London and Riyadh share similar stances on what he described as the Iranian threat, particularly in Syria and Yemen.

Yemen, the most impoverished Arab country, has been under relentless Saudi airstrikes since March 2015, when Saudi Arabia launched its military aggression against the neighboring country in an attempt to undermine Ansarullah and reinstate Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, the country’s former president and a staunch ally of Riyadh, who has resigned from his post as the country’s president.

The Saudi military aggression has left at least 11,400 civilians dead, according to the latest tally by a Yemeni monitoring group.