Iran’s foreign ministry claimed that warplanes from the Saudi Arabia-led coalition involved in Yemen’s ongoing war struck and damaged its embassy in Sanaa, yet another incident that could inflame tensions between Tehran and Riyadh.
Iran condemned the strike, according to foreign ministry spokesman Hussein Jaberi Ansari. But it was not immediately clear if the Iranian embassy was targeted or if it got struck unintentionally amid the broader conflict within Yemen. That war pits the Shiite Muslim rebel Houthis supported by Iran against forces loyal to President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, which are being backed militarily and otherwise by the overwhelmingly Sunni nation of Saudi Arabia.
Several guards were injured in the late Wednesday airstrike at the Iranian embassy in Sanaa, Ansari said Thursday, but there were no reports of any deaths.
The incident follows Saturday’s mass execution in Saudi Arabia of 47 people, among them prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, on terrorism charges.
Protests broke out in Iran hours later and the Saudi embassy in Tehran was attacked and set on fire, prompting Saudi leaders to sever diplomatic ties with Iran. Several other nations have sided with Riyadh including Bahrain — where a Sunni monarch rules over a predominantly Shiite nation — and Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, both of which recalled their ambassadors to Iran.
Yet Iran has remained defiant, with President Hassan Rouhani on Tuesday lashing out at Saudi Arabia for cutting ties in the wake of a angry reaction that he called “only natural.”