{"id":23821,"date":"2018-11-30T16:22:05","date_gmt":"2018-11-30T16:22:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=23821"},"modified":"2018-11-30T16:22:05","modified_gmt":"2018-11-30T16:22:05","slug":"egypt-arrests-briton-on-suspicion-of-spying-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=23821","title":{"rendered":"Egypt arrests Briton on suspicion of spying: family"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nMUKALLA: The US ambassador to Yemen on Thursday accused Iran of \u201cthrowing gasoline on the fire\u201d of conflicts across the Middle East, vowing that America will defend its regional interests and not \u201cshy away when the problems get difficult.\u201d
Ambassador Matthew Tueller\u2019s comments during an interview with The Associated Press signal that America\u2019s hard-line approach to Tehran in the wake of withdrawing from the nuclear deal will continue.
\u201cWherever we see instability here in the region \u2014 and I\u2019m not saying that Iran is the source of all of the instability \u2014 but we see that opportunistically, they\u2019re going in,\u201d Tueller told the AP at a military ceremony in eastern Yemen. \u201cThey\u2019re throwing gasoline on the fire in an area of the world that\u2019s so important to all of us.\u201d
Tueller became America\u2019s ambassador to Yemen in 2014 just as the Arab world\u2019s poorest country spiraled into chaos. Houthi militia stormed into the capital, Sanaa, and later seized power from the country\u2019s internationally recognized government.
The war has devastated Yemen, pushing the nation to the brink of famine and spreading disease like cholera. The war has killed over 10,000 people, displaced 3 million and left much of the infrastructure in ruins.
United Nations experts, Western nations and analysts say Iran supplies the Houthis with weapons ranging from assault rifles up to the ballistic missiles the Houthis fire into Saudi Arabia.
\u201cWe see Iran as one of the major forces that is trying to foster instability,\u201d Tueller said. \u201cStep back for a moment and look at what we have in Yemen. We have a non-state actor, a militia, that has overthrown the government, and yet it is receiving arms, equipment and a support from a state, Iran.\u201d
The diplomat from Provo, Utah, returned Thursday on a US military cargo plane to an Emirati military base near Mukalla. There, Tueller met Saudi Ambassador to Yemen Mohammed Al-Jaber, who wholeheartedly agreed with his assessment on Iran.
\u201cIran creates chaos in the region, it creates chaos everywhere, in Iraq, Bahrain, Syria, in Lebanon through Hezbollah, and in Yemen,\u201d Al-Jaber said. \u201cIran has no place in the Arabian Peninsula, it only creates chaos and terrorism everywhere. I don\u2019t think those who are capable of such acts are capable of peace.\u201d
Tueller offered an explanation of America\u2019s interests in the Mideast while speaking with the AP.
\u201cIt\u2019s an area of the world so important to all of us because of the critical oil and gas resources that are here, because of the potential for conflict here and we do not want to see conflict here,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd yet Iran, obviously, wherever we see them acting, they\u2019re acting not in a way to promote stability, but actually to exploit instability.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MUKALLA: The US ambassador to Yemen on Thursday accused Iran of \u201cthrowing gasoline on the fire\u201d of conflicts across the Middle East, vowing that America will defend its regional interests and not \u201cshy away when the problems get difficult.\u201dAmbassador Matthew Tueller\u2019s comments during an interview with The Associated Press signal that America\u2019s hard-line approach to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":23822,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}