Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s claim that Iran is hosting and supporting al-Qaeda leaders has been derided by Iranian officials as a “big lie.”

In a “60 Minutes” interview aired on CBS March 18, Prince Mohammed said, “Unfortunately, Iran is playing a harmful role. The Iranian regime is based on pure ideology. Many of the al-Qaeda operatives are protected in Iran, and it refuses to surrender them to justice and continues to refuse to extradite them to the United States. This includes the son of Osama bin Laden, the new leader of al-Qaeda. He lives in Iran and works out of Iran. He is supported by Iran.”

This is not the first time that Saudi Arabia has accused Iran of giving shelter to al-Qaeda leaders. In January 2017, Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, “The virtual board of directors of al-Qaeda settled in Iran after the American invasion of Afghanistan. The order to blow up three housing compounds in Riyadh in 2003 was made by Saif al-Athel, the chief of operations for al-Qaeda, while he was in Iran in a phone call that we have on tape. The three leaders of the terrorist attack against Khobar Towers in 1996 fled to Iran and have been living there ever since.”

In response to Prince Mohammed’s claim, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi issued a statement March 20 in which he strongly rejected the Saudi crown prince’s accusations. “Bin Salman’s claim about the presence of al-Qaeda leaders in Iran is a big lie. By spreading awkward lies, he can’t deny the role of the government and rulers of Saudi Arabia in creating the most dangerous terrorist groups of contemporary history and important terrorist occurrences such as 9/11,” hinting at the fact that 15 out of the 19 hijackers who perpetrated the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, were Saudis.