Saudi Arabia regularly makes these claims about missiles fired onto Mecca and/or Medina, but systematically fails to furnish even a shred of evidence. Some vague and unsourced statement from a Saudi news outlet hardly constitutes proof.
Ballistic missiles aren't usually intercepted in their terminal phase. These weren't intercepted above Mecca but probably hundreds of kilometers farther. If the Saudis have information on their trajectory, why not publish it with some hard evidence as a back up?
There are multiple OSINT analysts and missile experts publishing their findings online who would be able to verify the information if the Saudis provided some data to work on, but they never do. Most likely because these contentions about missiles targeting Mecca are baseless to begin with.
Also, ask yourself this: why would Yemenis, who are Muslims and as such regard Mecca as a holy city, target the latter? What would they stand to gain from it, other than universal condemnation and ruining their image with their own supporters?
Bottom line, these reports in all likelihood represent war propaganda. Surely the missiles Saudi sources claim were "aimed at Mecca", were in fact heading towards the Jeddah area, which is geographically close and is hosting plenty of military installations.
Also, it is quite strange for the Saudi regime to try and portray the Yemenis as negligent towards the integrity of the holy cities of Hijaz, when authorities in Riyadh themselves have a habit of demolishing heritage sites linked to Islamic history in Mecca and Medina.
Numerous examples are mentioned in the following papers:
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/saudi-arabia-destroyed-98-percent-of-its-cultural-heritage-174029
Even sites associated with the Prophet's family make way for skyscrapers and mega-hotels
www.theartnewspaper.com
Over 98% of the Kingdom's historical and religious sites have been destroyed since 1985
time.com
In a cultural landscape class which discusses issues of historic preservation, I introduced myself as a student interested in issues of historic preservation in the Arabian Peninsula, and how cities of the past are being destroyed across the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula. My professor responded
www.citiesfromsalt.com
Pilgrims follow in the footsteps of the prophet Muhammad, but there is little of his legacy left in Islam's holiest city
www.theguardian.com
How Saudi Arabia’s construction rampage is threatening Islam’s holiest city.
foreignpolicy.com
Almost all of the rich and multi-layered history of the holy city is gone. The Washington-based Gulf Institute estimates that 95 per cent of millennium-old buildings have been demolished in the past two decades.
www.independent.co.uk
Saudi Arabia, in which Wahhabism is the state form of Islam, has a long history of vandalizing and demolishing historical monuments.
www.arabamericannews.com
The way in which the materialistic spirit of capitalism was allowed to creep into Mecca is yet another issue of concern.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...lam-s-holiest-site-turning-vegas-2360114.html
Bulldozing Muslim heritage sites of Mecca is one thing, but did the residence of the Prophet's (sws) first wife Khadija really need to be replaced by a block of 1400 public toilets?
www.middleeasteye.net
Most bizarre and disturbing however is the fact that since 2004, Saudi authorities have been preventing pilgrims from stoning the pillars at Mena which represent the devil, after replacing said pillars with walls... Reason given: stones thrown by pilgrims would sometimes miss the pillars and hit people standing on the opposite side. Yet, logic suggests that it would have amply sufficed to erect a straight wall behind each of the pillars and rearrange the location in such a manner that all pilgrims would face the pillars and therefore throw stones into the same direction.
See:
Even before this, the pillars due to being unsafe for the public were replaced after the 2004 Hajj. The pillars were unsafe due to the fact that people on the other side were getting hit by the stones thrown.
The Saudi authorities thus replaced the pillars with walls that were about 85 feet or 26 meter long. The Jamaraat Bridge was also built to create an easier path to these walls.
https://edtimes.in/the-story-behind-islams-stoning-of-the-devil-ritual-by-hajj-pilgrims-explained/
I shouldn't even address outlandish rants calling into question the probity of the Iranian-led Resistance Axis, but some of these are so out of touch with reality that I shall formulate a couple of remarks in response.
To start with, just observe the behaviour of zionist users on this forum (500, sammuel etc): who are they attacking 24/7? That's right, they're completely and obsessively focused on Iran. Heck, for every single comment they made against the Palestinian Resistance, they have easily posted a hundred or more against Iran. Why in the world would they be doing that, why would they spend so much time and energy on slandering Iran if the regime they support or actually work for, i.e. Isra"el", wasn't viewing Iran as its main enemy?
People simply need to open a relevant history book to acquaint themselves with the fact that since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, no country has inflicted as many casualties on NATO and zionist forces combined as Iran did with the aid of her allies.
One of the first actions carried out by Iranian revolutionaries was to take over the spy den known as "US embassy" in Tehran. A historically unique and courageous act. Washington sent a contingent of special forces to free the arrested spies, but the helicopters carrying US troops collided in the desert and the troops perished.
The 1983 Beirut barrack bombings carried out by pro-Iranian fighters killed no less than 241 US military personnel as well as 58 French troops. Again in Lebanon in the 1980's, the CIA's regional station chief was killed by pro-Iranian elements.
In 1988, Iran and the US fought a direct war against each other in the Persian Gulf (see the US Navy's so-called Praying Mantis operation and so on), during which the Americans shot down a civilian Iranian airliner in a terrorist attack, taking the lives of all passengers on board.
In the early 2000's, Iranian-backed Resistance groups in Iraq eliminated over 600 American and British occupation forces by Washington's own admission.
When it comes to the zionist occupation regime, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon fought two wars against Isra"el". From 1982 to 2000 when Hezbollah waged non-stop guerilla attacks against zionist troops occupying Lebanon. And again in 2006, Hezbollah defended Lebanon against another zionist aggression. Each time eliminating many dozens of zionist forces.
Add to that Iran's support for almost all Palestinian Resistance formations since 1979, with Iran currently being the only state actor to extend military grade assistance to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Resistance Committees.
This is without mentioning how the US regime and its allies have been supporting each and every opposition grouplet to the Islamic Republic of Iran, including terrorist and "ethno"-separatist ones. Terrorist grouplets which murdered a total of 17000 Iranians over the years. Iranian intelligence got hold of and published a photograph of the ringleader of one of these grouplets years ago, a certain Abdolmalek Rigi, head of the Jund"allah" terrorist clique, standing inside a US military base in Kyrgyzstan.
Or the fact that Iran is at this time the country on earth most sanctioned by Washington.
Or the massive propaganda and psy-ops campaign conducted against Iran by the same zio-American empire, which is truly unprecedented in scope and intensity. As an example, there are an estimated 290 foreign-based Persian-language satellite TV channels beaming propaganda against the Islamic Republic into Iranian households.
This impressive work of Resistance has been completely unmatched by any other country since 1979. Other states in the region are mostly US allies and are therefore not engaging in any Resistance activity whatsoever, with countries such as Egypt and Jordan having recognized and established diplomatic ties with the illegal zionist occupation regime, and Persian Gulf monarchies such as the UAE and Bahrein having chosen to follow suit as of late.
These are undeniable historic facts. They may be hard to swallow for some (especially those with religious prejudices against Shia Islam), but prior to accusing Iran of not having done enough in terms of anti-imperial Resistance, an honest and clear-minded person will start by criticizing all other parties, which for the past four decades have not made any comparable efforts in this regard.
Now concerning the other conflicts Iran has participated in, at first we should highlight that Iran did not initiate any of them.
If we take Yemen as an example, that country has been at war almost uninterruptedly for nearly six decades now. The Saudi regime, through its former ally Ali Abdallah Saleh, had a hand in at least six previous wars fought between Houthis and the central government, at a time when Iran was not intervening militarily in Yemen. The Saudis were also one of the main parties involved in the internal conflicts which shattered Yemen during the Cold War period, such as the 1962-1970 North Yemen civil war, where Riyadh was supporting pro-western monarchists and Egypt siding with Soviet-friendly republicans. Yet, all we hear from certain quarters are accusations against Iran for mingling in Yemeni affairs - whereas Iran did not start any of the conflicts there, and whereas Saudi Arabia has interfered in that country countless times. And what exactly is Saudi Arabia, if not an official ally of the US? It was in order for Egypt's President Nasser to oppose the Saudi regime, but it isn't for Iran?
Likewise, the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war was not launched by Iran. Nor was the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, which was actually carried out from American military bases in Kuwait, Bahrein and Qatar.
When it comes to the Syrian war, the insurgency there was backed by the west, Isra"el" and their regional allies. We still vividly remember Netanyahu shaking hands with Syrian anti-government fighters who were being treated by Isra"el"i hospitals. As well as NATO's "control rooms" in Jordan and Turkey, from where the entire insurgency was directed. We remember the massive arms supplies to insurgents by NATO regimes and their regional clients (entire stocks of weapons from Bulgaria and Croatia weapons discharged by the Americans into Syria, no less than 13000 TOW anti-tank missiles purchased by Riyadh for Syrian insurgents etc). We haven't forgotten how NATO member Turkey opened up a gateway at its borders, through which tens of thousands of volunteers from over 50 countries entered Syria to join the insurgency, often thugs from ghettos or freshly released from prison on the condition of taking part in the war (as done by the Saudi Arabia), and also thousands of NATO-backed fighters from Libya recycled in the Levant. The conflict wasn't started by Iran, but Iran stepped in to assist an old time ally, to prevent hostile forces from taking over Syria and from severing its territorial bridge to Lebanon, where Hezbollah protects the land from Isra"el"i transgressions thanks to Iranian supplies. This would have severely undermined Iran's deterrence against the US and Isra"el", and these same armed groups may then have reached Iran's own borders. Had these oppositionists not tried to overthrow the Syrian government through armed struggle with the help of NATO and the zionists, Iran would have had zero interest in intervening there.
Secondly, I can hardly think of any minor or major power in the region that has not been involved in fighting other Muslims one way or another. Sometimes, you don't have a choice. This applies to Hamas, which, at its own scale in Gaza, once violently battled Fatah and clashed multiple times against armed salafist formations. This also goes for Pakistan, which directly or indirectly has fought at least six wars against Muslim groups, and in one instance even against Palestinian organizations which were resisting Isra"el" - the various counter-insurgency efforts in Baluchistan since the 1970's, the quelling of the Palestinian PLO in the so-called Black September war of Jordan in 1970, the war of secession in East Pakistan / Bangladesh, the civil war in Afghanistan consecutive to the ouster of the Soviets, the counter-insurgency in KPK since the 2000's... Just how many Muslims were killed in all these encounters, I wonder? Does it mean Pakistan has some unavowed grand strategy to conquer and submit Muslim lands? Does this somehow invalidate Pakistan's support for Arab armies during the Arab-Israeli wars of the 1960's and 1970's, or Pakistan's efforts to assist the liberation struggle in Kashmir? Of course not. Thence, why should Iran be deprived of the same luxury? Why should Iran's actions be measured by a different yardstick?
Last but not least, attempts to distort these events through a sectarian lense certainly top the list of delusions.
Not only are figures gratuitously being issued - for instance, Iran is not spending "8 billion USD" per year on groups other than Palestinians ones, the real figure is in fact considerably lower. And not only will nobody find a single example of Iran trying to "impose" Shia Islam on anyone anywhere since the victory of the Islamic Revolution.
But what is more, there's no doubt that Iran's foreign policy has nothing sectarian to it. Iran has repeatedly aided Sunni Muslim communities, groups or states in their political struggle or against aggressors. From Morocco to the Philippines, there's hardly a place where local movements of Sunni Islamic obedience have not benefited from Iranian support at some point in time and in some shape or form.
To which one must add Iranian military help for Sunni Muslims in a variety of theaters throughout the years. Such as in Bosnia during that country's civil war from 1992 to 1995 - here Iran was actually the biggest supplier of arms and military advisers to Bosnian Sunni Muslims, as documented by a wealth of evidence from all sides. Likewise, Iran assisted several Sunni Muslim factions in Afghanistan against Soviet occupation during the 1980's. Iran rushed to the rescue of Sunni Muslim Kurds of Iraq under imminent threat from "I"SIS in 2013.
What is more, none of the recent conflicts Iran has played a role in can be considered as sectarian in nature. In effect, the side backed by Iran has systematically been of multi-confessional composition.
Indeed, the Iranian-sponsored PMU of Iraq do not exclusively consist of Shia Muslims, on the contrary, they include Sunni Muslim brigades (the US-subservient administration in Baghdad had a Sunni PMU leader arrested just weeks ago, news of which was posted here), as well as Christian brigades.
In Lebanon, Iran's ally Hezbollah is in a political coalition with the Christian Free Patriotic Movement, while plenty of Sunni Muslim scholars, personalities and groups rally behind Hezbollah in its defence of Lebanese sovereignty against any zionist threats of encroachment or aggression.
In Syria, about half of the Syrian Arab Army's rank and file consist of Sunni Muslim, about a fifth of the SAA's generals are Sunni Muslims, President Assad's wife is a Sunni Muslim. Furthermore Iran has close relations to Sunni tribes in the Deir ez-Zour area near the border with Iraq.
In Yemen too, the division does not run along sectarian lines. Ansarallah (Houthis) were joined by large swaths of the Yemeni army formerly loyal to Saleh, which includes scores of Sunni Muslims. Conversely, the al-Ahmar, a Zaydi Shia tribe, allied themselves with Mansur Hadi's forces and are therefore fighting against Ansarallah (Houthis).
So any interpretation of these conflicts in sectarian terms is completely removed from reality. So is any rhetoric that erroneously ascribes a sectarianist and expansionnist or imperialist mindset to Iranian policy. For, all these inoperative narratives do, in addition to contradictng basic facts on the ground, is to obfuscate the geopolitical essence of these struggles, and to misrepresent Iranian motivations, which have never been anything but defensive and anti-imperialist in nature.
