January 31-2014
An Iranian diplomat working in Yemen was shot and killed this month when he apparently resisted an effort to kidnap him.
Another Iranian diplomat, Nur-Ahmed Nikbakht, was kidnaped last July and remains in captivity.
No group has claimed responsibility for either kidnap plot.
Kidnapings are commonplace in Yemen where clans routinely try to capture foreigners and prominent Yemenis and hold them for ransom—either money or the release of fellow clansmen detained by the government. But Iran says it has never been contacted by the kidnapers of the missing Iranian diplomat and no ransom has been sought.
In the killing January 18, Abol-Qassem Asadi, 45, Iran’s commercial attache in Yemen, had just left the ambassador’s residence in an upscale neighborhood of Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, and was getting into his car when a group of men tried to grab him. News reports said Asadi resisted and was shot three times.
The Islamic Republic summoned the Yemeni charge d’affaires to hear an official protest. Iran was effectively blaming Yemen rather than the diplomat’s attackers. The Iranian Foreign Ministry said it was doing that because under international law governments are responsible for the security of foreign diplomats. That is a rule the Islamic Republic preferred to ignore during the 444 days it detained 52 American diplomats in 1979-81.
Iran announced it had sent a team to Yemen to investigate the killing, although legally such an investigation is within the ambit of the Yemeni government. Saturday, Hossain-Amir Abdol-lahian, the deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs, said the investigation had identified the killers. However, he did not identify the killers.
Abdollahian also said a “foreign country” was likely involved in the assassination, whose name would be announced when Iran had gathered all the required documents. Iranian officials have been talking about Saudi Arabia as likely having a role. At the diplomat’s funeral in Tehran Saturday, Majlis Deputy Alaeddin Borujerdi, chairman of the National Security Committee, openly blamed Saudi Arabia.
The killing of the Iranian was the fourth attack in four months on foreigners in Sanaa. In October, a German embassy guard was killed when he resisted an effort to kidnap him. In November, gunmen killed a Belarussian military contractor and wounded another. In December, the Japanese consul was seriously wounded when he was dragged from his car and stabbed repeatedly. That happened only blocks from where the Iranian diplomat was killed.
Yemen has been in turmoil since the start of the Arab Spring in 2011, during which President Ali-Abdullah Saleh was forced to leave office.
The country is facing four kinds of disorder. First, there is resistance to the man Saleh turned the presidency over to. Second, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an Al-Qaeda franchise group, is very active in the country. Third, a decade-old rebellion by the Shia Houthi tribal band in the far north of the country has boiled over again. Fourth, many residents of southern Yemen who object to the reunification of the country two decades ago have launched a secession movement.
The Islamic Republic is reportedly helping both the secessionists and the Houthis to a limited degree. Some believe the Iranian goal is chiefly to keep the country in turmoil.
A news report Saturday from Yemen said the body of the Iranian kidnaped last July had been found beheaded, but Iran denounced the report as false; there has been no confirmation of the report in the intervening days.