Iran to Lodge UN Complaint Against US Arms Allegations

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Iran will refer the baseless US accusations of arms smuggling to Yemen's Houthis to the United Nations.

"The Iranian side will complain to the UN about US allegations about arms transfers to Yemen," Zarif wrote in a recent email to Sputnik, as cited by IRNA.

In a press briefing on Thursday, Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, presented pieces of what she claimed were Iranian weapons supplied to the Iran-allied Houthi forces, who are fighting a western-backed Saudi-led coalition that started airstrikes against Yemen in early 2015 for restoring ousted president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power.

The coalition intercepted a missile fired at an international airport outside Riyadh by the Houthis, which Haley claimed was an Iranian-made Qiam short-range ballistic missile.

The US has used the allegations, which have not been confirmed by UN inspectors, to push for sanctions against Iran for allegedly violating UN resolutions. Iran is required by a UN resolution adopted days after the conclusion of its July 14, 2015, nuclear agreement with the six power nations not to engage in weapons transactions without UN approval on a case-by-case basis. A separate UN resolution bans arms shipments to Houthis.

Iran described the weaponry displayed as "fabricated" and denied allegations about supplying weapons to Yemen.

  Cover-Up Attempt

Speaking to reporters in Tehran, Zarif dismissed the US administration's claim as an attempt to cover up its role in the war crimes in Yemeni's civil war and to deflect public attention away from its widely criticized move to recognize Beit-ul-Moqaddas as the capital of the occupying regime of Israel.

"Obviously, Haley's remarks were not backed up by evidence and failed to even convince other western states," Zarif said.

"Such statements are intended to let US crimes in the region, particularly in Yemen, and Washington's dangerous move to recognize Quds as the Zionist regime's capital fade into oblivion," he added.

The top diplomat was using another name of Beit-ul-Moqaddas, a major sticking point in negotiations between Israel and Palestinians, who want the eastern area of the disputed city as the capital of their future state.

Zarif had earlier described Haley's presser as a "show" in a Twitter message, drawing a parallel between Haley's claims and the case presented by former US secretary of state, Colin Powell, during his infamous UN speech in 2003 to justify the US invasion of Iraq, which took place shortly afterward.

"When I was based at the UN, I saw this show and what it begat," Zarif, who was Iran's representative to the United Nations at the time, wrote on his Twitter account. Seeking to muster international support for the US occupation of Iraq, Powell said the Washington had a "thick intelligence file" detailing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, based on evidence that later turned out to have been faked.

The Houthi-related accusations came against a backdrop of Washington's hostile tone toward the Islamic Republic, which has taken a markedly harsher turn after US President Donald Trump took office in January.