Iran has urged the Shia Houthi rebels to return the body of Hossein Khosravi, a missile expert who was killed on December 10, 2017 in a Saudi-led coalition air raid on Arhab district, near the capital Sanaa, according to Yemeni sources.
It is, however, next to impossible for the Houthis to break through the coalition blockade. No one knows how in the past they were able to return the dead bodies of Iranian military officers to Tehran.
Meanwhile, on December 11, the Houthis transferred Khosravi’s body from Hospital 48 to Al Moayed Hospital for no apparent reason, according to the Saudi-owned pan-Arab Al Arabiya TV network. The TV channel also reported that Iran had pulled 40 of its military advisers out of Yemen in recent days.
Tehran has persistently denied having any military presence in Yemen. But the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps [IRGC], Major-General Mohammad Ali Jafari, recently said: “We have advisers in Yemen.”
Meanwhile, a team of U.N. investigators travelled to Saudi Arabia in November to examine the debris of the missiles fired by the Houthi rebels at Riyadh on July 22 and November 4. In a report to the Security Council, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated: “The missiles had similar structural and manufacturing features, which suggest a common origin.”
The U.S. has called for Iran to be held accountable for violating U.N. Security Council resolutions on Yemen by supplying weapons to the Houthis.
