TEHRAN - United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday that the UN is “unable to independently corroborate” that missiles and drones used in attacks on Saudi oil facilities in September “are of Iranian origin”.

“At this time, it is unable to independently corroborate that the cruise missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles used in these attacks are of Iranian origin,” he wrote in the report, seen by Reuters.

Yemenis launched drone attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil installations on September 14, disrupting half of the country’s oil supply.

Washington and Riyadh claimed Iran was behind the attacks. Tehran has said blaming Iran for the attack is part of a larger game against Iran in line with Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in September that “even the Saudis themselves don’t believe the fiction of Iranian involvement” in the attacks on the Aramco oil facilities, citing Saudi Arabia’s retaliation attack on Hodaideh in Yemen as a reason.

In a post on his Twitter account, Zarif said it was “curious” that the Saudis, who had blamed Iran for the September 14 air raids on two major Saudi oil facilities, had retaliated against Hodaideh in violation of a UN-brokered ceasefire agreement signed in Stockholm in December 2018.

“Since the Saudi regime has blamed Iran—baseless as that is—for the attacks on its oil facilities, curious that they retaliated against Hodaideh in Yemen today—breaking a UN ceasefire. It is clear that even the Saudis themselves don’t believe the fiction of Iranian involvement.”

In a letter to the UN Security Council, Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Majid Takht Ravanchi said, “It has become a standard practice of certain officials of the United States who, following any incident -- no matter where and by whom – without exception, immediately and without any investigation and evidence, declare Iran as the culprit.”

Takht Ravanchi added, “This ‘maximum deception’ campaign is in line with and a living example of the so-called ‘maximum pressure’ policy of the United States against Iran.”

NA/PA