UAE summons Iranian chargé d’affaires over Yemen

The Emirati Foreign Ministry has summoned the Iranian chargé d’affaires in protest at what Abu Dhabi claims to be Tehran’s “provision of weapons” to Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah fighters, an allegation the Islamic Republic has repeatedly dismissed as unfounded.

Abdul Rahim al-Awadi, the United Arab Emirates’ assistant minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation for legal affairs, handed the Iranian envoy a note of protest, the official Emirates News Agency reported on Thursday.

Awadi said Iran’s alleged provision of arms to the Houthis violates a number of United Nations Security Council resolutions, which prohibit such arms supplies.

Iranian officials have not made any comment on the report yet.

The United Arab Emirates is a key Saudi ally in its deadly aggression against Yemen that was launched in March 2015 in a bid to reinstall the ex-Yemeni government and crush the Houthi Ansarullah movement.

The Riyadh regime and its regional and Western partners, including the US, have on numerous occasions accused Iran of shipping arms to Yemen’s Ansarullah fighters. Tehran has strongly rejected the claims as baseless and unsubstantiated.