TEHRAN (AFP): Iran on Sunday denounced the latest US and UK strikes on targets in Yemen saying they “contradict” their declared intention of avoiding a wider Middle East conflict.
These attacks are “in clear contradiction with the repeated claims of Washington and London that they do not want the expansion of war and conflict in the region,” Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Nasser Kanani, said in a statement.
He accused the US and Britain of “fueling chaos, disorder, insecurity and instability” by supporting Israel in its war against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.
Further strikes on Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels in response to the group’s attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea is “a threat to international peace and security”, Kanani said.
On Saturday the US and the UK struck dozens of targets in Yemen over Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, which the militia said are in solidarity with Palestinians in war-battered Gaza.
The previous day, the US military struck targets in Syria and Iraq, in retaliation for a January 28 drone attack on a base in Jordan that killed three US soldiers.
President Joe Biden has blamed “radical Iran-backed militant groups” for that attack, but said the US does not seek a wider conflict in the Middle East.
“I don’t think we need a wider war in the Middle East. That’s not what I’m looking for,” Biden said on Tuesday.
