Iran Rejects Claims It Was Behind Houthi Attacks

As Yemen’s conflict intensifies and Saudi Arabia comes under growing fire, Iran has moved to distance itself from a new wave of Houthi attacks, flatly rejecting Riyadh’s claim that Tehran helped drive the escalation.

Since Yemen’s civil war flared back to life in July, the pro-Iran Houthis have repeatedly struck Saudi targets including Red Sea tankers, oil facilities and Riyadh’s international airport, where 13 people were killed in a single attack last week.

A Saudi-led military coalition has supported Yemen’s internationally recognised government for more than a decade, and reported having intercepted more missiles and drones yesterday as the kingdom comes under sustained attack from the Houthis.

Iran’s response came a day after a Saudi foreign ministry official said Tehran had “encouraged” the escalation — an assertion Iranian officials dismissed.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran rejects any claim that Iran has played a role in Yemeni (Houthi) operations,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said in a statement.

“Yemen’s armed forces act according to their own interests and assessments, and such claims are not credible to those familiar with relations between Iran and its friends. Nevertheless, Iran does not consider an escalation of tensions to be in the interests of any party,” he added.

In a statement, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said that Yemen’s armed forces ‘act according to their own interests and assessments’

The Saudi official, deputy minister for public diplomacy Dr Rayed Krimly, had said the Houthis rejected an offer to meet in Oman at the outset of the latest round of hostilities.

Mr Baghaei, however, renewed an Iranian offer to help broker talks, saying Iran “has always been ready to use its good offices to help end the hostilities”.

Yesterday, a spokesman for the Saudi-led military coalition said it had “intercepted and destroyed three drones in the southern area and Riyadh and two cruise missiles over the Red Sea”.

He added that “in the past hours, we intercepted and destroyed a ballistic missile over Yanbu”, a city home to the terminus of a major oil pipeline on the Red Sea coast.

The tempo of Houthi strikes has accelerated since the group launched a lightning offensive in Yemen in September, taking strategic government-held territory along the Red Sea coast overlooking a major chokepoint for global shipping.

For Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, the latest pressure lands as energy markets were already on edge after Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz at the outset of the wider Middle East war in February.

Airport struck

On the ground in Yemen, government forces backed by Saudi air power have mounted a counteroffensive to recapture areas seized by the Houthis, but have so far been unable to roll back the group’s gains.

Yesterday, the local security office in Aden, the government’s interim capital, said two missiles landed within the perimeter of the city’s airport, “in the second incident of its kind in less than a week”, adding that no one was killed.

The Houthis, in a statement attributed to a military source, said the attack targeted “the Saudi forces’ command headquarters” as well as a weapons depot.

The Yemeni information ministry said in a statement that a Yemenia Airways flight from Aden to Cairo narrowly missed being struck.

It was “preparing for takeoff at the very moment when the terrorist Houthi militia targeted the airport with two missiles that landed approximately 500 metres from the aircraft and about 100 metres from the centre of the runway,” a statement said.

“What occurred was not merely an assault on a civilian airport, but a direct threat to the lives of passengers and flight crews, to aviation safety, and a grave violation of international laws and norms,” it added.

The day before, the group launched a deadly missile attack on the presidential palace in Aden, killing five people and wounding 16 others, according to the health minister.

Yemeni Prime Minister Shaya al-Zindani denounced the “cowardly” act on X, calling it a “continuation of (the Houthis’) criminal pattern”.

A government minister said on condition of anonymity that the Houthis hit command centres for Yemeni and Saudi coalition forces housed at the palace complex.

Media affiliated with the Houthis said the attack had targeted “the headquarters of military operations, led by Saudi officers, at the Al-Maashiq Palace in Aden”.