Kuwait City--Iran warned Tuesday that the Saudi "attack" on Yemen endangered the whole region, calling for an immediate halt to the military operation against Shia rebels.
"The fire of war in the region from any side... will drag the whole region to play with fire. This is not in the interest of the nations in the region," Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said.
"We strongly object to the military solution in Yemen. We believe that the Saudi military attack against Yemen is a strategic mistake," Abdollahian told reporters on the sidelines of a Syria donors conference in Kuwait.
"Military operations must stop immediately" to open the way to a "political solution," he said.
A Saudi-led Arab coalition has been pounding rebel positions in Yemen since Thursday. Riyadh accuses Tehran of backing the Huthi Shia rebels.
Abdollahian said Iran sees the intervention in Yemen as "external aggression" that will foment extremism in the region.
But Tehran and Riyadh are "capable of cooperating to strike a compromise in Yemen," and the same can apply to a solution in Syria, he added.
His remarks came shortly after Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal denounced Iran's "support" for Shia rebels seeking to "destabilise" Yemen, insisting that the kingdom's rulers are not "warmongers".
Saudi Arabia fears that the rebels, who seized power in the capital Sanaa in February, could take the country into the orbit of Iran, its Shia-dominated rival across the Gulf.
AFP
