Standing in a US military air hangar amid a tableau of alleged Iranian missile parts, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley called out Tehran in strong terms today for “destabilizing behavior” throughout the Middle East but provided little clarity on how Washington would respond.
The announcement drew together missile fuselages allegedly fired on Saudi Arabia in July and November by the Iran-backed Houthi rebel group in Yemen, combined with diagrams and markings that US officials said confirmed their Iranian origin. Haley said the decision to declassify the evidence came as part of the Donald Trump administration’s effort to call out Iran’s support for proxies across the region.
“We did this for a single urgent purpose, because Iran’s regime cannot be allowed to engage in this lawless behavior anymore,” Haley said.
US officials believe that the Houthis used a type of missile to target Saudi Arabia in November not yet seen in the yearslong conflict. The Saudi air force used US-built Patriot missile batteries to shoot down the alleged Iranian Qiam-1 missile over King Fahd International Airport, near Dammam, a major oil production center. US officials said that the weapons displayed today were missing large stabilizer fins that are present on other short-range ballistic missiles.
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