TEHRAN – Major General Mohammad Hossein Baqeri, the Armed Forces Chief of Staff, has said Iranian military officers only provide advisory assistance to the popular forces in Yemen.

In an interview with China’s Phoenix TV during a recent visit to Beijing, Baqeri rejected reports that Tehran had supplied missiles to Yemen’s popular army, Tasnim reported.

“We are giving Yemen’s popular Army advisory and intellectual assistance and the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) is in charge of this,” he said.

“Today, Yemen is under a complete blockade (by Saudi Arabia), which has blocked all paths and prevented the delivery of food and even medicine”.

“How can one transfer several-meter-long missiles to Yemen when it is not possible to send medicine (to the Arab country)?” the top general asked.

On September 14, Yemen’s Ansarullah movement and their allies in the Yemeni army deployed as many as 10 drones to bomb Abqaiq and Khurais oil facilities run by the Saudi state-owned oil company Aramco.

However, Saudi Arabia and its Western allies blamed the attack on Iran.

Baqeri also emphasized that the Islamic Republic will stand by the side of Yemeni people until the aggressors put an end to their atrocities.

Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out deadly airstrikes against the Yemenis in an attempt to restore power to fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh.

MH/PA