TEHRAN – The spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry Nasser Kanaani has rejected the baseless allegation that weapons were being smuggled from Iran’s southern port city of Bandar Abbas to Yemen’s Hudaydah port.
In comments, Kanaani responded to a question from journalists regarding alleged smuggling of arms from Bandar Abbas to Yemen’s Hudaydah.
Kanaani said such claims are “baseless and repetitive staging” on the part of the “invading coalition and their Western supporters.”
The spokesman said the invading coalition and their Western backers must be held accountable for the crimes that they have committed for seven years in Yemen.
Those crimes have left innocents dead, destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and unleashed the greatest humanitarian catastrophe of the century, he added.
He maintained that framing Iran is only aimed at distracting the public opinion of regional and world countries from the realities of the Yemen crisis, the Foreign Ministry’s website reported.
Kanaani added that Iran’s support for the Yemeni people was political from the very beginning of the crisis and that Iran has always backed the peaceful process in Yemen and also the UN’s efforts to peacefully end this devastating war and to keep the truce in Yemen.
He underlined that continuation of hostile policies and repetition of threadbare scenarios are at odds with their claim that they want the ceasefire hold and will not deliver any new outcome for the aggressors.
Saudi Arabia launched a devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in collaboration with its Arab allies and with arms, logistical, and political support from the U.S. and other Western states. Simultaneous with the invasion, the aggressors and their supporters also put the entire impoverished country under an all-out land, aerial, and naval blockade.
Iran Sympathizes With Egypt Over Cairo Church Fire Deaths
The spokesperson also offered his condolences to Egypt over deaths in a fire that ripped through a Coptic Christian church in Greater Cairo on Sunday.
Kanaani sent condolences to Egypt’s government and people, particularly the families of victims of the tragic fire.
He also wished swift recovery for those who were injured in the bitter incident.
The blaze on Sunday, blamed on an electrical fault, hit the Abu Sifin church in densely populated Imbaba, a working-class district west of the Nile River, part of Giza governorate in Greater Cairo.
Hundreds gathered to pay their respects in and around the two Giza churches on Sunday evening where clergymen prayed for the victims.
The Egyptian Coptic Church and the health ministry reported 41 dead and 14 injured in the blaze before emergency services brought it under control.