Houthi leaders provided advance information about their intention to assassinate former Yemeni President Saleh: Former UK ambassador
A senior diplomatic official at the British Foreign Office said that he had been informed by the Iran-backed Houthis prior to the assassination of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh in December 2017.
Former British ambassador to Yemen, Edmund Fitton Brown, said that he had held talks with senior Houthi leaders, who informed him in advance of their intention to assassinate former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Brown, who served as the British Ambassador to Yemen from 2015 to 2017, spoke during a webinar last Thursday organized by the Counter Extremism Project (CEP) - where he currently works as a senior advisor - to hosts a report on "how the Houthis are diverting aid away from Yemen's neediest".
The Houthi notification to UK was like taking the green light from the holder of the Yemeni file (Britain), who is involved in many of its complex threads, to carry out a suspicious and non-national agenda at the hands of the Houthis.
The British statements were not the only ones for European countries or Iran, as they were preceded by a statement from an American diplomat admitting that the militia was given the green light to assassinate Saleh.
Houthi militia spokesman Mohammed Abdul Salam mentioned in a tweet on (X) that the US ambassador Matthew Tueller indirectly incited them to assassinate Saleh in response to the six wars in Saada, during the Kuwait consultations that were launched in April 2016 between the Houthis and the Yemeni government.
This incitement was preceded by numerous American pressures demanding Saleh to leave Yemen, but the pressures failed in the face of Saleh's insistence on not abandoning his country and people, which greatly annoyed Washington and led it to increase its pressures and conspire with Tehran and its militias in Yemen, as well as other international parties, including Arab ones.
Direct Iranian involvement
Several Iranian leaders have admitted Tehran's involvement, and its direct orders to its militias in Yemen to assassinate the late President Saleh.
On the second day after the assassination of Saleh, the commander of the (IRGC), Mohammad Ali Jafari, showed up, implicitly declaring Iran's involvement in Saleh's assassination, by saying that what he called "the conspiracy to overthrow the Houthis in Yemen has been extinguished in its cradle", referring to the Revolution of the Second December, 2017.
This came in statements quoted by the Iranian Tasnim agency, in which Jafari renewed his confirmation of providing support to the Houthis.
The book titled "The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the US, and Iran's Global Ambitions" revealed the biography of Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of the (IRGC). It also detailed Soleimani's direct orders to kill the late Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh in December 2017.
The author of the book, Arash Azizi, explained in an interview with the Carnegie Middle East Center in late December 2020, in response to a question about how he knew that Soleimani directly ordered the killing of Saleh: "Two members of the Quds Force informed me separately about Iran's policy towards Yemen in this regard".
"A source in the leadership of the Houthis also told me, that this was a request from Soleimani". Azizi added.
When it comes to Yemen, Iran's involvement is more than just an arm. It has two main elements: trying to help the Houthis become more militarily advanced and trying to give them a stronger ideological foundation". Azizi further said.