Ansarullah Dares Saudi King to Directly Face Iran If He Has Scores to Settle

By Staff, Agencies

A senior Yemeni Ansarullah official asked Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz to settle scores with Iran if he dares to face the Islamic Republic directly.

Chairman of Yemen’s Supreme Revolutionary Committee Mohammed-Ali al-Houthi made the remarks in a sarcastic tweet on Friday.

“King Salman well knows the Yemenis are only fighting the Americans who are using the Saudi soil and US-made weapons to wage a war against the Yemeni nation,” al-Houthi said.

“If the Saudi king has scores to settle with Iran, he’d better face the country directly,” he added.

The Ansarullah official made the remarks in reaction to the Saudi king’s virtual address to the 75th General Assembly of the United Nations, in which he said Riyadh would not take its hands off the Yemeni nation until it “gets rid of Iran’s domination.”

King Salman blamed the Islamic Republic for much of the Middle East’s instability, and repeated a host of baseless accusations against Iran, ranging from “sponsoring terrorism” to seeking weapons of mass destruction.

The video of the speech was released on Wednesday showing the aging monarch sitting at his office as he struggled to read the text from papers, which he was grasping with both hands, without looking at the camera.

The 84-year-old monarch accused Iran of providing support to Yemen’s popular Ansarullah movement, which has been defending the Arab country against the kingdom’s 2015-present war. He once again blamed Iran for the 2019 Yemeni attacks against Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil installations.

The Saudi ruler also took aim at the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, claiming Tehran exploited the agreement to “intensify its expansionist activities.” He also claimed “the kingdom’s hands were extended to Iran in peace with a positive and open attitude over the past decades, but to no avail.”

Iran strongly dismissed the Saudi king’s claims, and highlighted the Saudi regime’s atrocities and civilian massacres in Yemen, of which King Salman made no reference during the speech.