Russia Vetoes Anti-Iran Resolution at UN

The text, strongly supported by the United States, won 11 favorable votes at the 15-member Security Council but was blocked by Russia's veto.

China and Kazakhstan abstained, while Bolivia also voted against the measure.

Nine votes and no vetoes from the five permanent council members -- Britain, France, China, Russia and the United States -- are required to adopt resolutions at the Security Council.

After the veto, the council unanimously adopted a Russian-drafted measure that extended for one year the sanctions regime against Yemen, but that text made no mention of Iran.

A group of UN experts monitoring the sanctions on Yemen reported to the Security Council in January that it had “identified missile remnants, related military equipment and military unmanned aerial vehicles that are of Iranian origin and were brought into Yemen after the imposition of the targeted arms embargo.”

The UN experts, however, said they were unable to identify the supplier.

After hours of negotiations to try to reach a compromise, Russia made clear it had strong reservations about the findings of the report and would not support a draft resolution that mentioned them.

"We cannot concur with uncorroborated conclusions and evidence which requires verification and discussions within the sanctions committee," Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the council.

After the Russian veto, US Ambassador Nikki Haley repeated her anti-Russian and anti-Iranian remarks, accusing Russia of protecting "the terrorist-sponsoring regime in Iran" and warned of further action targeting Iran, AFP reported.

"If Russia is going to use its veto to block action against Iran's dangerous and destabilizing conduct, then the United States and our partners will need to take actions against Iran that the Russians cannot block," Haley claimed.

Both Tehran and Sana’a have repeatedly rejected the allegations as a fabricated scenario and said the armed forces of Yemen have strengthened their missile power on their own.

Iran, along leading international human rights organizations, has called for an immediate end to the sales of arms by Washington, London and other Europeans to Saudi Arabia and other aggressors, who are killing innocent Yemeni people on a daily basis.

During his first trip to Saudi Arabia last year, US President Donald Trump signed a $110 billion arms deal with the Saudis, with options to sell up to $350 billion over a decade.

According to statistics by the UK’s Department for International Trade (DIT), Britain’s sales of military equipment to Saudi Arabia hit £1.1 billion in the first six months of 2017.

Yemen’s defenseless people have been under massive attacks by the coalition for almost three years but Riyadh has reached none of its objectives in Yemen so far.

Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out deadly airstrikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement in an attempt to restore power to fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi.

Over 14,000 Yemenis, including thousands of women and children, have lost their lives in the deadly military campaign.