Yemen's Presidential Council Demands International Inquiry Into Iranian Flight to Sana'a

Spread the Word

Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council has warned that it will draw on every political, diplomatic, legal and military tool at its disposal to defend national sovereignty after an Iranian aircraft reached Sana’a International Airport, which remains under Houthi control. In a statement issued in his capacity as supreme commander of the armed forces, the council’s chairman, Rashad al-Alimi, called the flight a fresh violation of Yemeni airspace and a challenge that the internationally recognised government would not allow to become routine.

The council said the aircraft’s arrival amounted to a blatant breach of Yemeni sovereignty, a defiance of international law and a violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions. Officials cast the episode as the latest in a pattern of Houthi conduct that, in the government’s account, has repeatedly undermined de-escalation efforts and blocked a negotiated end to a war now in its second decade. They insisted that allowing such flights to continue would erode what remains of the country’s legal order.

According to the government, preliminary information indicated that the plane had been used to move personnel, experts and equipment with potential military applications. It alleged the presence of Iranian specialists in drone and missile development, together with command-and-control and communications equipment intended to bolster Houthi capabilities. The council stressed that these were its own assessments and called for independent verification, while the Houthis maintained that the flight was purely humanitarian and carried civilians rather than weapons or personnel.

The controversy is closely tied to events in Iran. Houthi figures had travelled to Tehran in connection with the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in late February during a wave of US-Israeli strikes and buried in July after days of funeral ceremonies. Their planned return aboard an Iranian carrier became the trigger for the crisis, prompting Yemen’s government to reject the request and, officials said, to strike the runway at Sana’a airport on 13 July to stop the aircraft from landing. The plane diverted instead to Hodeidah on the Red Sea coast.

The council traced the standoff to an earlier Iranian flight that had landed at Sana’a on 3 July to carry the Houthi delegation to Tehran, a service the government said set a precedent it was determined not to repeat. Officials argued that permitting a second flight to complete the round trip would normalise the use of Houthi-held airports by Iranian carriers outside any recognised legal framework, and would hand the group a propaganda victory at the government’s expense.

To avoid a confrontation, the government said it had proposed a compromise under which any returning passengers could travel aboard a neutral chartered aircraft rather than an Iranian one. Officials described the offer as an attempt to keep airports functioning while preserving Yemen’s authority over its own airspace and honouring international legal standards. That proposal, they said, was rejected by the Houthi leadership, which the government accused of preferring confrontation to a workable legal solution.

Al-Alimi placed responsibility for the escalation squarely on the Houthis while also pointing to Tehran. The council argued that Iranian support for the group had deepened Yemen’s crisis and complicated any political settlement, warning that continued backing would only prolong the fighting. At the same time, the chairman sought to signal restraint, saying he had ordered forces not to widen the confrontation after the airport strike, even as he insisted that future violations of Yemeni airspace would not be tolerated.

On the security track, the president directed the ministries of defence and interior and other agencies to raise their readiness and to protect the country’s airspace, territory and border crossings. On the diplomatic track, the council asked the Foreign Ministry to intensify contacts with regional and international partners, urging them not to permit their airspace or facilities to be used for unauthorised flights into Yemen. Officials framed both measures as part of the state’s duty to defend its sovereignty.

Al-Alimi went further by calling for an international investigation into the flight, which he said belonged to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, arguing that an independent inquiry was needed to establish what the aircraft had carried and who had authorised it. The council appealed to the international community to move beyond statements of condemnation toward firmer enforcement of Security Council resolutions and tighter sanctions on entities it accused of violating Yemeni sovereignty, warning that inaction would risk normalising such breaches.

The dispute also comes amid a wider confrontation between the United States and Iran over the Strait of Hormuz, which has sharpened regional tensions and drawn fresh attention to Tehran’s network of allied forces. Analysts say the reach of that rivalry into Yemen underscores how the country’s war has become entangled with broader contests playing out across the Gulf and the Red Sea.

The standoff unfolds against the backdrop of a conflict that has gripped Yemen since 2015, when the Houthis seized Sana’a and a Saudi-led coalition intervened to restore the recognised government. Years of war have produced one of the world’s gravest humanitarian emergencies, displacing millions and leaving much of the population dependent on aid. Sana’a’s airport, long a strategic and humanitarian flashpoint, once again sits at the centre of the dispute, and officials said the path ahead would depend heavily on the choices made by the Houthis, Iran and the outside powers pressing for restraint.