Beautiful US weapons failed to bring Yemenis to their knees: Zarif
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has said that Saudi Arabia has not been able to bring the people of Yemen to their knees even with the use of “beautiful US weapons.”
Zarif made the remarks on Sunday during an interview with the al-monitor television network.
“The Saudis remain under the false assumption, which they also had in Syria, that they can achieve a military victory, this is why the war on Yemen continues,” he said.
During the interview Zarif once again stressed the only possible solution to the situation in Yemen is a political one.
“They have not been able to end the war, even with the use of beautiful weapons which the buy from the US and the serious imbalance in military power between the Saudis and the Yemenis they still have not been able to bring the people of Yemen to their knees,” he stressed.
He went on to stress that the sooner the Saudis realize this fact the sooner the nightmare situation for the people of Yemen will come to an end.
Zarif further noted that Iran is prepared to act as a political mediator between Saudi Arabia and Yemenn. He noted that the Saudis have on several occasions declined Iran’s offers to help end the conflict on the war-torn country.
“It is not us who are bombing people in Yemen, we have no presence there, but we have a limited influence there which we can be used for political negotiations,” he noted.
Iran’s foreign minister also stressed that since the beginning of Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen, Iran has been calling for intra-Yemeni dialogue, urgent humanitarian assistance, and an immediate ceasefire for the impoverished country.
The Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights announced in a statement on March 25 that the Saudi-led war had left 600,000 civilians dead and injured since March 2015.
The United Nations says a record 22.2 million Yemenis are in need of food aid, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger.
A high-ranking UN aid official recently warned against the “catastrophic” living conditions in Yemen, stating that there was a growing risk of famine and cholera there.
The Saudi aggression was launched in March 2015 in support of Yemen’s former Riyadh-friendly government of president Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi and against the country’s Houthi Ansarullah movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of an effective administration.
The offensive has, however, achieved neither of its goals despite the spending of billions of petrodollars and the enlisting of Saudi Arabia’s regional and Western allies.
