31JUL

Baqaei calls the UAE missile claim baseless

2 min read

09:24UTC

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman called the Emirati missile allegation baseless on 19 August, telling Mehr News Agency that unfounded claims damage confidence between neighbours.

← Back to The pause ends, and the map moves west Jump to analysis ↓

ConflictDeveloping

Key takeaway

Iran denies the missile allegation but has announced no answer to the Emirati measure itself.

Esmaeil Baqaei, spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry, rejected the Emirati missile allegation as baseless on 19 August. Unfounded claims against Iran damage efforts to prevent regional insecurity and build confidence between neighbours, he told Mehr News Agency ¹.

The allegation he is answering dates to 8 August, when the United Arab Emirates said an Iranian missile had targeted an ADNOC vessel in the strait . That claim, and the piracy accusation that followed it, form the stated grounds for the trade and financial halt Abu Dhabi announced on 18 August.

Baqaei disputed the grounds and left the measure alone. He announced no countermeasure, summoned nobody in Abu Dhabi, and named no Emirati official. His phrasing sat in the register of neighbourly confidence-building, which is not the register a government reaches for when it intends to answer in kind.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, Esmaeil Baqaei, said on 19 August that accusations linking Iran to a missile attack on a UAE-linked vessel are false. He argued that making such claims makes the region less safe, because they damage trust between neighbouring countries. This is Iran's direct answer to the UAE's decision, a day earlier, to name Iran's Revolutionary Guard as the attacker and cut off trade. The two governments now disagree publicly about who did what, with no independent verification available to settle it.

What could happen next?

Meaning
Baqaei's denial keeps Iran's public position that it bears no responsibility for the tanker attacks the UAE has cited as grounds for a full trade halt.

Source Landscape

This story draws on mixed-leaning sources from Iran

Iran

LeftRight

Primary parallel: Baqaei has denied Iranian responsibility for Hormuz-area disputes before; his 13 August comments on strait administration similarly rejected the premise that Iran bears the cost of the conflict's disruption, arguing instead that others owe Iran for environmental damage (ID:5683).

Counter-parallel: Iran's own account of the 11 August Vela Nova strike differs from this case: there, the US openly claimed the strike, leaving Iran nothing to deny. Denial is only available to Tehran when the underlying attack is attributed to it in the first place, which is why this rejection follows the UAE's naming of the IRGC rather than a US claim.

Consensus view: Iran's Foreign Ministry, through spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei, characterises the UAE's missile allegation as unfounded and argues that repeating it undermines confidence-building between neighbours, the same framing Baqaei used on 13 August when he tied any Hormuz administration deal to compensation for environmental damage he blames on the conflict rather than on Iran .

Counter-view: The UAE's own 13 August statement did not rest on this single incident; it formally named the IRGC as the perpetrator of an ADNOC tanker attack and invoked UN Security Council Resolution 2817 , a legal step Abu Dhabi does not appear to have reversed since.

Key tension: Whether a categorical denial from Tehran's spokesman carries weight against a formal, resolution-citing attribution from a state that has just cut all trade with Iran on the strength of it.

Sources:Mehr News Agency·Mehr News Agency

Mentions:Esmaeil Baqaei →Iran →Mehr News Agency →Tehran →Emirates →Abu Dhabi →ADNOC →M/V Vela Nova →United Arab Emirates (UAE) →Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) →UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs →

First Reported In

Update #172 · The strait nobody can count, insure or pay

Mehr News Agency· 19 Aug 2026

Read original →

Causes and effects

Caused by

Abu Dhabi cuts Iran's payment channel

Baqaei's rejection answers the missile allegation underlying the UAE's trade halt.

Occurred 17 Aug 2026

Read story →

This Event

Baqaei calls the UAE missile claim baseless

Tehran contests the reason Abu Dhabi gave, not the measure Abu Dhabi took.

Different Perspectives

United States

OFAC gazetted two wind-down licences expiring four days apart and adopted a presumption of denial for new Iran sanctions requests, while the State Department separately sanctioned Kataib Hezbollah and Hezbollah financial networks. Washington is closing legal channels on a published calendar rather than all at once.

United Arab Emirates

Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan met Iran's president in New Delhi, the first known face-to-face since the war began, weeks after cutting all Emirati trade and financial dealings with Iran. Abu Dhabi is running economic pressure and diplomatic contact at the same time.

Houthis

Houthi forces completed the capture of Yemen's Red Sea coast and Mayun island this week, an offensive a Houthi official confirmed alongside Yemeni government officers. The gain locks in the Bab al-Mandeb closure to Saudi crude declared as an embargo on 23 July.

Iran

Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei credited Iranian diplomacy backed by military strength for pushing neighbours to negotiate, citing the Oman safe-passage talks, while addressing none of the pipeline strike, the Iraqi dismissals or Saudi restraint directly.

Iraq

Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi sacked two Maysan officials, closed and reopened three Iran border crossings inside three days, and approved a joint inquiry with Tehran into the launch site on his own territory. He is managing a militia network he does not fully control rather than confronting it.

Saudi Arabia

Riyadh's Foreign Ministry confirmed the Petroline strike, named no attacker, and said it would hold off retaliating at Iraq's request while reserving the right to act on its own sovereignty. It expects Baghdad's inquiry, not a Saudi strike, to be the next move.