Report of Iran Transferring Militants to Yemen ‘Fabricated’

Date: 09 May 2021 - 22:59

News ID: ۹۰۰۶۴

TEHRAN (Dispatches) -- Iran on Sunday dismissed a Turkish news agency report that the Islamic Republic was transferring fighters from Syria to Yemen.
In a post on its Twitter account, the Iranian embassy in Ankara said it "categorically rejects the news published by Anadolu Agency about the transfer of fighters from Syria to Yemen by the Iranian Armed Forces, noting that such a claim is a sign of ignorance regarding the facts on the ground.”
"This fabricated claim contradicts the Islamic Republic of Iran’s approach to the catastrophic and inhumane war against the Yemeni people. The Islamic Republic of Iran has always called for an end to the war and supported UN efforts towards finding a political solution.”
The statement came two days after Anadolu alleged that Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) had sent some 120 fighters from Syria to Yemen to fight in the ranks of the Ansarullah movement.
Citing local sources, the report claimed that the fighters would be sent to the conflict zones in Yemen after a week of training in the capital, Sana’a.
It further alleged that more fighters could be dispatched to Yemen in the near future depending on the performance of the first group.
Turkey is a key sponsor of several militant groups wreaking havoc in Syria for years. The country is widely believed to have transferred some of the militants to Libya where it has been supporting outgoing prime minister Fayez al-Sarraj against renegade general Khalifa Haftar.
The accusation against Iran comes amid reports of a push to mend relations between Turkey and Saudi Arabia following a period of tensions which escalated after the brutal murder of columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia has also been waging a devastating war on Yemen with arms and logistics support from the U.S. and several other Western countries.
Riyadh launched the war with the aim of returning a Saudi-backed former regime back to power and crush the popular Ansarullah movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of an effective government in Yemen.
The offensive has failed to achieve its goals, but pushed Yemen to the brink, killed hundreds of thousands of people and destroyed the impoverished state’s infrastructure.
Currently, 80 percent of the Yemeni population, including 12.4 million children, are in dire need of humanitarian assistance.
Throughout the Saudi aggression, Iran has stressed that the Yemen crisis cannot be settled militarily, calling for a cessation of the war and the removal of a tight naval and air blockade on the impoverished country.