NGO head condemned for tweet about Iran attack on Saudi Arabia

The head of the UK-based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) was condemned today for a tweet which appeared to justify or play down an Iranian attack on Saudi Arabia.

Referring to the attack on 14 September against a Saudi Aramco oil facility in the Kingdom, Kenneth Roth wrote on Twitter that it was “far better than the Saudi crown prince’s attacks on Yemen which routinely kill civilians.”

Reuters reports that Iran's supreme leader approved the attack on the Saudi oil installation so long as no civilians were hit. If true, that's far better than the Saudi crown prince's attacks in Yemen which routinely kill civilians. https://t.co/6k05GQcXXJ pic.twitter.com/srQSLj6VtQ

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) November 25, 2019

The tweet by the HRW head was in response to an article by Reuters which reported that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had apparently ordered the attack on the oil facility with the condition that no civilians or Americans should be harmed.

Iran: the eternal geopolitical empire

Roth’s tweet was condemned by social media users, many of whom questioned his apparent justification of Iran’s attack as well as downplaying the Islamic Republic’s own human rights violations.

In particular, this is being viewed in the light of the protests in Iran over the past week and Tehran’s brutal crackdown which has killed 146 protesters to date.

Several hours after his first tweet, Roth issued a second: “Of course this isn’t meant to condone the Iranian supreme leader’s brutal repression at home, as his forces gun down protesters.”

The attack on the oil facility had a devastating effect on Saudi Arabia’s oil production, cutting it by a third to a half, amounting to 5 per cent of global oil output.

Saudi king blames Iran for ‘chaos’, says strikes failed to hurt kingdom’s development

Initial reports suggested that it was carried out by drones controlled by the Houthis in Yemen — with whom Saudi Arabia has been embroiled in a four-year war – but then suspicions emerged that it must have been conducted by a state due to the sophistication of the drones and the accuracy of the strike.

The revelation that Khamenei himself ordered the attack comes after Iran formerly denied any involvement; it has now confirmed the suspicions already held by the Kingdom and the US.

On Sunday, there were fears that Saudi Arabia had attempted a retaliatory strike when the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, claimed that Tehran had successfully thwarted a foreign-backed conspiracy to set oil facilities on fire in the Gulf port city of Assaluyeh.