TEHRAN - In an article published on Monday, the editor-in-chief of the Saudi daily Asharq Al-Awsat used the Ansarullah strike on Riyadh airport as a pretext to level a series of sweeping — and at times bizarre — accusations.

The strangest claim comes where he writes of the attack: “Rarely in the history of warfare has a civilian airport crowded with passengers been the target of an attack.” One has to ask: Is Mr. Charbel suffering from memory loss, or is he deliberately seeking to conceal and distort the facts?

It would be possible to compile an extremely long list of Saudi airstrikes on civilian targets in Yemen since Riyadh launched its invasion of its southern neighbor in 2015. Even mourning ceremonies and wedding celebrations of the oppressed people of Yemen were not spared from bombardment, time and again turned into bloodbaths — in some cases with up to 150 victims killed in a single strike.

Let us examine just one case in greater detail. At midday on August 9, 2018, a bus full of schoolchildren stopped at the local market in Dahyan, in Saada province. The students were returning from a picnic — likely experiencing the happiest day of their lives.

Your country’s fighter jets had been circling in the sky above the area for nearly an hour. They were armed with MK-82 laser-guided bombs — bombs you had purchased from the United States just a year earlier. The missiles were fired, and moments later, the happiest day in the lives of 40 children became the last day of their lives. Most of them were under the age of 10.

Have you ever considered that almost everything about the war you unleashed on Yemen bears a striking resemblance to America’s wars? You named your operation “Decisive Storm”; America had “Desert Storm” on its record. The war launched in partnership with Israel against Iran was dubbed “Epic Fury.” You struck Yemeni civilians again and again — and America has never fought a war without repeated attacks on civilian targets. Does the chilling parallel between the Dahyan atrocity and the Minab school not give you pause? And there is one final, telling similarity: Riyadh, too, tried to manufacture a veneer of legitimacy for its aggression by assembling a nominal coalition — precisely what Washington does in most of its military adventures.

Have you ever asked yourselves why, despite possessing such modern and advanced weaponry, you have been unable to defeat Ansarullah? Your problem from the very beginning was that you never properly understood Yemen and its faithful, resilient people. You branded them an “Iranian proxy” — and you continue to do so. Strangely, you insist on denying the reality that Yemenis are independent, and that on matters of both war and peace, they decide for themselves. Until you accept that reality, you will never escape this self-made quagmire, and no mediator will be able to help you.

We, as Iranians — your Muslim brothers and your neighbors — want you to stand with dignity. We take no pleasure in seeing America treat you as a “cash cow,” plundering your wealth through colossal arms and security contracts. How can an America incapable of protecting its own bases and troops in the region possibly protect you and bring you security? Do you remember what Trump said in 2018? He declared openly that without us, Saudi Arabia would not survive two weeks. A year later, he boasted that with a single phone call, he took 500 million dollars from them.

In today’s world, money may solve many problems, but it certainly does not buy authority or respect. You have surely not forgotten what Trump said about your Crown Prince at the summit hosted by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) in Miami this March, before some 1,500 prominent businessmen and investors: “He didn’t think he would be kissing my ass. He really didn’t. He thought it’d be just another American president that was a loser where the country was going downhill. But now he has to be nice to me. You tell him he’d better be nice to me.”

Have you ever wondered why Trump feels entitled to insult your leaders so brazenly?

Whatever the solution to Saudi Arabia’s problems today may be, it does not lie in Washington or Tel Aviv. They harbor a civilizational and existential hostility toward Muslims — a hostility that will not be resolved with bribes worth hundreds of billions.

And finally, I suggest that when you suffer a painful retaliatory blow on the battlefield in Yemen, instead of pointing the finger of blame at others, you take a good look in the mirror first.