The United States has stepped up its offensive against Iran, accusing it of supplying short-range ballistic missiles to Houthi rebels in Yemen in “blatant violation” of UN Security Council resolutions under which Tehran is prohibited from supplying, selling or transferring weapons outside the country without the council’s approval.
Displaying pieces of charred remnants of such a missile that was reportedly fired by the rebel militia from Yemen at the airport in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh on November 4, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said the recovered pieces represented “concrete evidence” of Iran’s weapons proliferation.
“The missile’s intended target was the civilian airport in Riyadh, through which tens of thousands of passengers travel each day,” Haley said at a news conference held at a Washington military warehouse, stressing: “In this warehouse is concrete evidence of illegal Iranian weapons proliferation, gathered from direct military attacks on our partners in the region.”
“I repeat: This missile was used to attack an international civilian airport in a G-20 country,” Haley said against the backdrop of the recovered missile parts, adding: “Just imagine if this missile had been launched at Dulles Airport (Washington) or JFK (New York), or the airports in Paris, London, or Berlin. That’s what we’re talking about here. That’s what Iran is actively supporting.”
Stating that it is important for the entire international community to judge the behviour of Iran, Trump’s high-ranking Indian-American envoy said: “As President Trump announced on October 13, the United States is taking a new approach to Iran by focusing on all of the regime’s destabilising behaviour. That means we are focused not just on the nuclear programme.”
As part of this approach, Haley said the US was also taking a hard look at Iran’s ballistic missile programme, its arms exports, and its support for terrorists, proxy fighters and dictators. Asserting that the nuclear deal that Iran secured in 2015 after protracted negotiations with the world powers “has done nothing to moderate the regime’s conduct in other areas”, she said the US’s new strategy was prompted by the “undeniable fact that the Iranian regime’s behaviour is growing worse.”
“The fight against Iranian aggression is the world’s fight,” she commented, adding: “The United States is acting today in the spirit of transparency and international cooperation that is necessary to defeat this threat.”
At the Washington military warehouse, Pentagon displayed debris from what officials said were two Iranian-made “Qiam” ballistic missiles fired from Yemen. One missile had reportedly been fired on July 22 and another on November 4.
“What is most revealing about this missile is what’s not here. This is a short-range ballistic missile. It is missing the large stabilizer fins that are typically present on these kinds of missiles,” Haley said. As she put it, the Iranian Qiam missile is the only known short range ballistic missile in the world that lacks such stabilizer fins but has nine valves running along the length of the missile.
“Those valves are essentially Iranian missile fingerprints,” Haley said, adding: “On your walk through, you will also see missile debris stamped with the logo of Shahid Bagheri Industries, an Iranian manufacturer.”
The warehouse also displayed material from an anti-tank guided missile, and an unmanned aerial vehicle, also known as a kamikaze drone, that can take out radar sites.