Zarif lashes out at US for complicity in Yemen war

“It's official: Supplying bombs, targets and refueling Saudi warplanes is apparently not enough. US now proclaiming that it's "doing the planning" in war on Yemen too,” Foreign Minister Zarif said in a tweet on Thursday.

 “US complicity in world's biggest humanitarian disaster [is] unfathomable,” he added.

Zarif’s remarks came in reaction to the recent acknowledgment by US Defense Secretary James Mattis that Washington is “doing the planning in Yemen strikes, and has shown the Saudis how the concept of a no-strike zone is supposed to work, and engaged in a maturing process of battlefield management” in a military campaign that has killed thousands of Yemeni civilians in the past three years. 

Mattis also admitted that the US has been involved in mid-air refueling of Saudi warplanes, under the claim that the operation could help minimize civilian casualties.

Meanwhile, the three-year Saudi aggression on Yemen has killed about 14,000 people and displaced more than 2 million, all in absence of a clear condemnation from the UN Security Council.