Iran has denied any involvement in the attacks carried out by Yemen’s Houthis, one day after Saudi Arabia accused it of having encouraged the group’s recent escalation against the kingdom.
Since Yemen’s civil war reignited in July, the pro-Iran Houthis have repeatedly hit Saudi targets, among them Red Sea tankers, oil facilities, and Riyadh’s international airport, where 13 people were killed in a single attack last week.
For more than a decade, a Saudi-led military coalition has backed Yemen’s internationally recognized government, and on Friday it reported intercepting further missiles and drones as the kingdom faces sustained attacks from the Houthis.
A day earlier, an official at Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry said Iran had “encouraged” the escalation, a claim Tehran denied.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran rejects any claim that Iran has played a role in Yemeni (Houthi) operations,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said in a statement.
“Yemen’s armed forces act according to their own interests and assessments, and such claims are not credible to those familiar with relations between Iran and its friends. Nevertheless, Iran does not consider an escalation of tensions to be in the interests of any party,” he added.
The Saudi official, Dr. Rayed Krimly, deputy minister for public diplomacy, had stated that the Houthis turned down an offer to meet in Oman at the start of the latest round of hostilities.
Baqaei, however, restated an offer to mediate between the two sides, saying Tehran “has always been ready to use its good offices to help end the hostilities.”
On Friday, a spokesman for the Saudi-led military coalition said it had “intercepted and destroyed three drones in the southern area and Riyadh… and two cruise missiles over the Red Sea.”
He added that “in the past hours, we intercepted and destroyed a ballistic missile over Yanbu,” a city home to the terminus of a major oil pipeline on the Red Sea coast.
The Houthi attacks have multiplied since the group mounted a lightning offensive in Yemen in September, capturing strategic government-held territory along the Red Sea coast that overlooks a key chokepoint for global shipping.
The strain on Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, arises as global energy markets were already unsettled by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz at the start of the broader Middle East war in February.
Yemeni government forces, backed by Saudi air support, have mounted a counteroffensive to retake areas the Houthis seized but so far have not managed to reverse their gains.
On Friday, the local security office in Aden, the government’s interim capital, reported that two missiles had landed within the perimeter of the city’s airport, “in the second incident of its kind in less than a week,” adding that no one was killed.
In a statement attributed to a military source, the Houthis said the attack had targeted “the Saudi forces’ command headquarters” as well as a weapons depot.
The Yemeni information ministry said in a statement that a Yemenia Airways flight from Aden to Cairo had narrowly avoided being struck.
It was “preparing for takeoff at the very moment when the terrorist Houthi militia targeted the airport with two missiles that landed approximately 500 meters from the aircraft and about 100 meters from the center of the runway,” a statement said.
“What occurred was not merely an assault on a civilian airport but a direct threat to the lives of passengers and flight crews, to aviation safety, and a grave violation of international laws and norms.”
According to the health minister, the group had launched a deadly missile strike on the presidential palace in Aden the previous day, killing five people and injuring 16 others.
On X, Yemeni Prime Minister Shaya al-Zindani condemned the “cowardly” act, describing it as a “continuation of (the Houthis’) criminal pattern.”
A government minister, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Houthis struck command centers for Yemeni and Saudi coalition forces located at the palace complex.
Media outlets affiliated with the Houthis reported that the attack had targeted “the headquarters of military operations, led by Saudi officers, at the Al-Maashiq Palace in Aden.”
