Iran Accuses Saudi Arabia of Attacking Embassy in Yemen
By THOMAS ERDBRINK and KAREEM FAHIM

TEHRAN — Iran accused Saudi Arabia on Thursday of an aerial attack on its embassy in Sana, the capital of Yemen, escalating a conflict between the rivals that has put the region on edge, although witnesses said the building was not hit.

The attack, on Wednesday night, was said to have occurred as the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen carried out its heaviest airstrikes in months over Sana.

But guards at the Iranian Embassy and witnesses said the mission itself had not been bombed. Witnesses said the airstrike hit a home across the street from the embassy, a residence that was said to belong to a son of Ali Abdullah Saleh, the former president who was overthrown in 2012.

Embassy guards were wounded by shrapnel, according to Noaman al-Idrisi, a Yemeni security official who was at the embassy on Thursday.

The rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia has exacerbated the civil war that began in Yemen last year. Saudi Arabia’s Sunni monarchy intervened in the war in March, aiming to defeat Shiite-led Yemeni rebels, known as the Houthis, which the Saudis view as a shadow force for Iran.

About 2,800 civilians have been killed in the fighting, a majority of them by coalition airstrikes, according to the United Nations.

The Houthi rebels, who are allied with Mr. Saleh, drove his successor, President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, from power. Saudi Arabia supports Mr. Hadi, and the Saudi-led coalition has repeatedly struck homes belonging to Mr. Saleh, his family and his allies in populated residential areas in Sana.

A spokesman for the Iranian foreign minister, Hossein Jaber Ansari, “strongly condemned the Saudi aircraft missile attack on Iran’s embassy in Sana, which caused damage to the embassy building and wounded a number of the building’s guards,” the ILNA news agency reported.

Mr. Ansari added: “This deliberate attempt by the Saudi government is in violation of all the conventions and regulation of international law on the protection and the security of diplomatic premises in all situations, and the responsibility for the action, as well as compensation for damage done to the building and injuries to the embassy staff, lies with the government of Saudi Arabia.”

The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen will investigate the accusation, said a spokesman for the coalition, Brig. Gen. Ahmed Asseri, according to Reuters.

Despite the harsh political speech, an influential Iranian analyst hinted that the country would not retaliate. “Our patience with the Saudis has not yet worn out,” said the analyst, Hamid Reza Taraghi, who is close to hard-line Iranian leaders. “We continue to restrain ourselves.”

Still, the episode added another dimension to a dispute that has roiled the region since Saturday, when Saudi Arabia executed 47 men, including a dissident Shiite cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

Enraged Iranians stormed the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and the Saudi Consulate in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city. Saudi Arabia responded by cutting ties with Iran, as did Bahrain and Sudan. Kuwait and Qatar recalled their ambassadors to Iran, and the United Arab Emirates, a significant trading partner of Iran’s, downgraded diplomatic relations.

The dispute has threatened to disrupt the fragile negotiations to bring an end to Syria’s five-year-old civil war, as well as Iraq’s effort to repulse the Islamic State.

Earlier on Thursday, Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami, a commander of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in Iran, warned Saudi Arabia that it would “face collapse in the near future” if it stayed on its current course.

General Salami was speaking at a protest against Sheikh Nimr’s execution. He compared the Saudis to the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein — a Sunni leader of a majority-Shiite country who was toppled when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. Mr. Hussein ordered the execution of a prominent Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Sadr, in 1980, inflaming sectarian tensions that persist to this day.

“Saddam, in Iraq, took the same course, executed a leading cleric in Iraq and finally took resort in domestic suppression and aggression toward other countries, but ultimately his faith ended in humiliation,” General Salami said.

“This regime, Saudi Arabia, has taken political refuge with the Americans,” he said, adding that the Saudi policies would create a “domino effect under which they will fall themselves.”

伊朗控沙國 空襲駐葉門使館…兩國怨更深

伊朗七日指控沙烏地阿拉伯的軍機六日晚間故意轟炸伊朗駐葉門首都沙那的大使館，將向聯合國安理會抗議。沙國當局表示會調查此事，此一發展將使伊朗與沙國之間的緊張關係升高。

伊朗官方媒體引述外交部發言人安沙里的話說：「沙烏地阿拉伯的故意行動，違反所有保護外交使館的國際公約，沙國政府必須為大使館建築受損和一些工作人員受傷負責。」

不過，伊朗後來的一些報導說，飛彈僅擊中大使館附近。

沙那當地居民說，位於哈達區的伊朗大使館建築沒有受損，空襲擊中距離大使館約七百公尺的廣場，一些石頭和碎片落在大使館的庭院裡。

一名七日進入大使館的居民說，使館沒有受損。

沙國二日處決什葉派教士尼姆，引發伊朗民眾攻擊沙國駐德黑蘭大使館，沙國隨即與伊朗斷交，伊斯蘭世界的遜尼派龍頭沙國和什葉派老大伊朗公開決裂，也為葉門內戰的解決方案蒙上陰影。沙國指控伊朗支持葉門的什葉派叛軍胡塞組織，並指胡塞組織是伊朗擴張勢力的代理人，沙國已組織聯軍與胡塞組織作戰。

聯軍發言人阿塞里說，聯軍六日晚間猛烈轟炸沙那，目標是胡塞組織用來攻擊沙國的飛彈發射器。

他說，聯軍將調查伊朗的指控，並表示，胡塞組織利用一些民用設施，包括被棄置的使館。過去一年，一些國家的外交人員已撤離沙那，轉往南部的亞丁港。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/08/world/middleeast/iran-saudi-arabia-yemen.html

Video：Officials in Iran accused Saudi Arabia in an attack on their nation’s embassy in Yemen, and plan to report the matter to the United Nations.
http://www.nytimes.com/video/world/middleeast/100000004130749/iran-responds-to-embassy-attack-in-yemen.html

2016-01-08．聯合報．A13．國際．編譯田思怡