A senior official in the Iran-allied Houthi movement said the movement of more US warships into waters off Yemen escalates Washington’s role in a Saudi-led campaign against the group and aims at tightening a “siege” on the country.
Saudi Arabia and Sunni Arab allies have been bombing the group for almost a month, in an operation which has closed Yemen’s sea and airports, blocking off food and other imports to the impoverished country.
“The goal of the movement of American ships is to strengthen the siege imposed on Yemen and put the Yemeni people under collective punishment,” Houthi politburo member Mohammed al-Bukhaiti told Reuters by telephone from Yemen.
“This step increases the level of their participation in this war,” he added.
The US Navy has sent an aircraft carrier and a guided-missile cruiser into the waters near Yemen to conduct maritime security operations, a Pentagon spokesman said on Monday, but he denied the ships were on a mission to intercept Iranian arms shipments.The ships will join seven other US warships already in the waters near Yemen.
Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia believes Shia Iran backs the Houthis, Islamists from an offshoot branch of Shi’ism, and aims to establish a foothold in the kingdom’s southern neighbour and undermine Gulf Arab security.
A senior Iranian official told Reuters in December a “few hundred” elite Iranian military personnel were in Yemen training Houthi fighters, and around a hundred Yemeni militiamen had travelled to Iran over the year, but Iran and the Houthis deny they have any military or economic relationship.
“Ansarullah (the Houthis) don’t need weapons from outside. We have enough,” al-Bukhaiti said.
Instead the USA should have used this golden opportunity in the middle-east to be an honest, reliable and reputed partner to resolve the several crisis in the last few months; starting with ISIS, IRAN NUCLEAR BOMB, YEMEN, SYRIA, IRAQ, LIBYA and Egypt.
This was the time to use wise American diplomacy to offer carrots keeping guns in the other hands. America should have forced all these gangs to unite first to defeat ISIS first using all means; and then should have offered amicable solutions not favoring any player and not making any one our enemy. But by playing under Saudis, oil kings and Sisi's hands, against Iran; America has bankrupted her reputation, image, honesty and above all political will.
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