Hitting back at pressure over its support for Ansar Allah (Houthi) insurgents in Yemen, Iran’s officials have accused the US of abetting a “humanitarian disaster” in the country’s civil war.

Earlier this week, the US, Saudi Arabia, and their allies accused Iran of supplying a Houthi missile that was fired on Riyadh, killing an Egyptian national. Tehran repeated that is providing only political support to Ansar Allah, which controls the Yemeni capital Sana’a and much of the country.

The European Union and some of its members — notably the UK, Germany, and France, three of the signatories to the July 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran — are using the issue for press for negotiations over the Islamic Republic’s ballistic missile program.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif led the pushback on Thursday:

Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi chided French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian over the claim that the Houthis are “supplied with arms by Iran”:

[This is] false and a big lie, the repetition of which by some regional and extra-regional countries will not change the Islamic Republic of Iran’s resolve to enlighten the world public opinion about one of the worst humanitarian disasters and war crimes in contemporary history and the oppression of Yemen’s defenseless people.

Arming the aggressor and accusing others will go nowhere and the awakened consciences of the world people will be the ultimate witnesses and judges.

Qassemi advised French diplomats to think a bit about humanity instead of focusing on arms sales to countries like Saudi Arabia.

At the UN, Iranian Ambassador Gholam Ali Khoshroo — responding to a Saudi letter seeking condemnation of Tehran’s support of the Houthi — rejected “imaginary” and “unfounded” claims: “Accusing Iran of providing or smuggling ballistic missiles to one of the parties to the conflict in Yemen is nothing but an attempt to conceal the brutal and unlawful aggression in Yemen and the extremely appalling situation caused by such aggression.”

Since a Saudi-led coalition intervened in the conflict in March 2015 with airstrikes and a naval blockade, more than 10,000 civilians have been killed in the civil war. Millions are at risk from shortages of food and basic supplies.