The changes that followed October 7 and “Israel’s” attempt to defeat Hamas, only expedited the establishment of the new Iranian strategic security approach. (Al Mayadeen Net)
Despite sanctions, Iran has been transforming its economy and has succeeded in shifting the political equation against “Israel”, starting with Operation True Promise.
The latest developments between Tehran and Tel Aviv reflect a shift in Iran’s previous strategy in confronting “Israel”, encompassed in the change of what Iranian officials dubbed “strategic patience”.
The extensive range of rocket-based operations launched deep into occupied territories indicates that Iran seeks to establish deterrence against “Israel” and its Western allies’ military policies in the Middle East. With this consideration, Iran’s viewpoint becomes clear: The age of change has begun, and the future of the security organization in the region would not be stable without preserving Iran’s political and economic interests.
The changes that followed October 7 and “Israel’s” attempt to defeat Hamas, only expedited the establishment of Iran’s new strategic security approach.
The Yemeni Armed Forces, with their army and the Ansar Allah resistance fighters, joined the conflict directly against “Israel”, and threatened its interests in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which simultaneously alerted the world.
And it seems like Tehran, through its strategic relations with Sanaa, is saying that it will not take lightly to movements against its interests in the region. Western countries are now well aware of that reality, and due to their growing concerns regarding the economic losses stemming from the hazards facing maritime trade security, they have increasingly pressured “Israel” over the recent weeks to dilute its military operations in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s disruptive government suffered the most intense damage, which could lead to his sacking mid-war. To overcome this crisis, Netanyahu tried to find a safe space for himself and attempted to control the opposition by directly targeting the Iranian consulate in Damascus and expanding tensions.
A shift in the political, strategic equation
The attack against the Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1 led, on one hand, to the martyrdom of seven Iranian military officials, but on the other hand, senior Iranian officials, such as the leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Khamenei, considered it to be an attack against Iranian sovereignty and land. In other words, “Israel” overstepped Iran’s red lines and necessitated the decisive Iranian response to preserve the established strategic equation and place clear boundaries against “Israel’s” policy of aggression.
In the early days after the Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate, experts evaluated the Iranian response but showed contradicting views. Some speculated that it would be restrained, to avoid escalations or direct military confrontations against “Israel” and the United States. Meanwhile, some Western officials went as far as to contact Tehran to dissuade it from responding to “Israel”, citing warnings of the consequences. But the Iranian response would later signify a shock in reality, prompting different analyses of Iran.
The extensive missile and drone attacks launched against Israeli military bases from Iranian soil were out of the question for analysts and officials around the globe. Practically, the failure of the Israeli defenses, and the arrival of several Iranian missiles to their military targets, drew a clear scene of the Israeli defenses’ weakness. That comes regardless of the false Israeli claims about the failure of the Iranian attack or the intervention of several countries, particularly US, French, and British defenses, that have defended “Israel” during the attack.
The attack was in reality a monumental step in the formation of a new equation to balance the regional powers. Iran warning Washington against interfering in regional conflicts added another piece to this domino, which is now complete as the US backed away.
Besides the Iranian authorities’ trust in their own capabilities and military strength, it seems as though Iran prepared for the months leading up to this phase and anticipated the escalation of tensions as one of many scenarios. Following decades of harsh economic sanctions, “Israel” expected Iran’s calculations to be different regarding its response due to worries about increased economic troubles. The operation was speculated to have a lesser impact on “Israel”, but Iran’s extensive missile attack proved that it overcame these worries.
Iranian media published several reports revealing that the government noticeably increased its reserves in goods over the past few months, and ended a significant portion of its dependence on exports. But the stronger card placed on the table was the change in foreign asset reserves in the central bank, as sanctioned countries seek to nullify a large number of sanctions imposed on them by transforming their reserves to gold and precious metals without causing an economic crisis in the country.
Information shared by trusted foreign sources stated that the Iranian Central Bank increased its gold and precious metal reserves over the past three months, in an unprecedented move. This shows that Iran is working on finding a safe method to fund foreign trade despite the pressure of US sanctions, starting with the private and non-oil trade sectors, which allowed Iranian tradespeople to pay their forwards of foreign currency with gold.
In the same context, the stability and decrease in the value of the US dollar in the Iranian market after the Israeli attack and the Iranian response is also an indicator of the central bank’s success in curbing the effects of political actions on the market and Iran’s success in regaining the trust of its tradespeople.
The retaliatory operation on April 19 proved that Israeli officials faced a change in their previous ideas regarding Iran’s determination to respond militarily, which has shaken “Israel’s” standing on the chessboard with Iran.
No more shadow play. It’s now in the open. No holds barred.
Exhibit 1: Friday, March 22, 2024. It’s War. The Kremlin, via Peskov, finally admits it, on the record.
The money quote:
“Russia cannot allow the existence on its borders of a state that has a documented intention to use any methods to take Crimea away from it, not to mention the territory of new regions.”
Translation: the Hegemon-constructed Kiev mongrel is doomed, one way or another. The Kremlin signal: “We haven’t even started” starts now.
Exhibit 2: Friday afternoon, a few hours after Peskov. Confirmed by a serious European – not Russian – source. The first counter-signal.
Regular troops from France, Germany and Poland have arrived, by rail and air, to Cherkassy, south of Kiev. A substantial force. No numbers leaked. They are being housed in schools. For all practical purposes, this is a NATO force.
That signals, “Let the games begin”. From a Russian point of view, Mr. Khinzal’s business cards are set to be in great demand.
Exhibit 3: Friday evening. Terror attack on Crocus City, a music venue northwest of Moscow. A heavily trained commando shoots people on sight, point blank, in cold blood, then sets a concert hall on fire. The definitive counter-signal: with the battlefield collapsing, all that’s left is terrorism in Moscow.
And just as terror was striking Moscow, the US and the UK, in southwest Asia, was bombing Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, with at least five strikes.
Some nifty coordination. Yemen has just clinched a strategic deal in Oman with Russia-China for no-hassle navigation in the Red Sea, and is among the top candidates for BRICS+ expansion at the summit in Kazan next October.
Not only the Houthis are spectacularly defeating thalassocracy, they have the Russia-China strategic partnership on their side. Assuring China and Russia that their ships can sail through the Bab-al-Mandeb, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden with no problems is exchanged with total political support from Beijing and Moscow.
The sponsors remain the same
Deep in the night in Moscow, before dawn on Saturday 23. Virtually no one is sleeping. Rumors dance like dervishes on countless screens. Of course nothing has been confirmed – yet. Only the FSB will have answers. A massive investigation is in progress.
The timing of the Crocus massacre is quite intriguing. On a Friday during Ramadan. Real Muslims would not even think about perpetrating a mass murder of unarmed civilians under such a holy occasion. Compare it with the ISIS card being frantically branded by the usual suspects.
Let’s go pop. To quote Talking Heads: “This ain’t no party/ this ain’t no disco/ this ain’t no fooling around”. Oh no; it’s more like an all-American psy op. ISIS are cartoonish mercenaries/goons. Not real Muslims. And everyone knows who finances and weaponizes them.
That leads to the most possible scenario, before the FSB weighs in: ISIS goons imported from the Syria battleground – as it stands, probably Tajiks – trained by CIA and MI6, working on behalf of the Ukrainian SBU. Several witnesses at Crocus referred to “Wahhabis” – as in the commando killers did not look like Slavs.
It was up to Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic to cut to the chase. He directly connected the “warnings” in early March from American and British embassies directed at their citizens not to visit public places in Moscow with CIA/MI6 intel having inside info about possible terrorism, and not disclosing it to Moscow.
The plot thickens when it is established that Crocus is owned by the Agalarovs: an Azeri-Russian billionaire family, very close friends of…
… Donald Trump.
Talk about a Deep State-pinpointed target.
ISIS spin-off or banderistas – the sponsors remain the same. The clownish secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, was dumb enough to virtually, indirectly confirm they did it, saying on Ukrainian TV, “we will give them [Russians] this kind of fun more often.”
But it was up to Sergei Goncharov, a veteran of the elite Russia Alpha anti-terrorism unit, to get closer to unwrapping the enigma: he told Sputnik the most feasible mastermind is Kyrylo Budanov – the chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence at the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.
The “spy chief” who happens to be the top CIA asset in Kiev.
It’s got to go till the last Ukrainian
The three exhibits above complement what the head of NATO’s
military committee, Rob Bauer, previously told a security forum in Kiev: “You need more than just grenades – you need people to replace the dead and wounded. And this means mobilization.”
Translation: NATO spelling out this is a war until the last Ukrainian.
And the “leadership” in Kiev still does not get it. Former Minister of Infrastructure Omelyan: “If we win, we will pay back with Russian oil, gas, diamonds and fur. If we lose, there will be no talk of money – the West will think about how to survive.”
In parallel, puny “garden-and jungle” Borrell admitted that it would be “difficult” for the EU to find an extra 50 billion euros for Kiev if Washington pulls the plug. The cocaine-fueled sweaty sweatshirt leadership actually believes that Washington is not “helping” in the form of loans, but in the form of free gifts. And the same applies for the EU.
The Theater of the Absurd is unmatchable. The German Liver Sausage Chancellor actually believes that proceeds from stolen Russian assets “do not belong to anyone”, so they can be used to finance extra Kiev weaponizing.
Everyone with a brain knows that using interest from “frozen”, actually stolen Russian assets to weaponize Ukraine is a dead end – unless they steal all of Russia’s assets, roughly $200 billion, mostly parked in Belgium and Switzerland: that would tank the Euro for good, and the whole EU economy for that matter.
Eurocrats better listen to Russian Central Bank major “disrupter” (American terminology) Elvira Nabiullina: The Bank of Russia will take “appropriate measures” if the EU does anything on the “frozen”/stolen Russian assets.
It goes without saying that the three exhibits above completely nullify the “La Cage aux Folles” circus promoted by the puny Petit Roi, now known across his French domains as Macronapoleon.
Virtually the whole planet, including the English-speaking Global North, had already been mocking the “exploits” of his Can Can Moulin Rouge Army.
So French, German and Polish soldiers, as part of NATO, are already in the south of Kiev. The most possible scenario is that they will stay far, far away from the frontlines – although traceable by Mr. Khinzal’s business activities.
Even before this new NATO batch arriving in the south of Kiev, Poland – which happens to serve as prime transit corridor for Kiev’s troops – had confirmed that Western troops are already on the ground.
So this is not about mercenaries anymore. France, by the way, is only 7th in terms of mercenaries on the ground, largely trailing Poland, the US and Georgia, for instance. The Russian Ministry of Defense has all the precise records.
In a nutshell: now war has morphed from Donetsk, Avdeyevka and Belgorod to Moscow. Further on down the road, it may not just stop in Kiev. It may only stop in Lviv. Mr. 87%, enjoying massive national near-unanimity, now has the mandate to go all the way. Especially after Crocus.
There’s every possibility the terror tactics by Kiev goons will finally drive Russia to return Ukraine to its original 17th century landlocked borders: Black Sea-deprived, and with Poland, Romania, and Hungary reclaiming their former territories.
Remaining Ukrainians will start to ask serious questions about what led them to fight – literally to their death – on behalf of the US Deep State, the military complex and BlackRock.
As it stands, the Highway to Hell meat grinder is bound to reach maximum velocity.
All eyes are on Rafah as Israel prepares to mount an invasion to expel Palestinians or decimate them. It is this pivotal battle that will either force Israel into a ceasefire or thrust the region into an all-out, multi-front war.
The temporary truce struck on 24 November between the Hamas resistance movement and the Israeli government could have paved the way toward successive truces and potentially a sustainable ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
But the opportunity was squandered by Tel Aviv, who viewed the continuation of its genocidal war as a means to reshape Gaza’s political and security landscape under the guise of ‘restoring deterrence’ and mitigating domestic fallout from Hamas’ 7 October Al-Aqsa Flood Operation.
Now, nearly six months since the commencement of what Israel calls a ‘war of survival and existence’ against Gaza, it has become clear that the occupation state’s military aggression cannot unseat Hamas from either the Strip or the broader Palestinian political arena.
The recent flurry of indirect Hamas–Israel negotiations held in Paris, Cairo, and Doha have revealed a stark political reality: Hamas is the primary Palestinian negotiating party where Gaza is concerned. This tacit acknowledgment by Tel Aviv marks the strategic failure of one of Israel’s dual objectives set forth last October, aimed at eradicating Hamas and its allied resistance factions in the Strip.
Bibi’s political interests v domestic backlash
This reality raises questions about the potential pathways available to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he struggles with immense international pressure to stop the carnage. Will he persist with the war on Gaza and risk global pariah status, or will he be compelled to pursue a politically costly settlement? The latter option, it should be noted, will not be an easy fix. It could potentially unleash a storm of domestic backlash within Israel, with various political factions eager to hold him accountable from multiple angles.
Since Netanyahu abandoned the truce in November, prominent Israeli political commentators and even former prime ministers have been surprisingly unanimous in their assessment. They argue that Netanyahu’s decision to prolong the war serves mainly his personal political interests, allowing him to project an illusion of victory while evading political, security, and judicial scrutiny.
Accordingly, Netanyahu’s stance remains firmly opposed to a war settlement. He has instead doubled down on the necessity of eliminating the military capabilities of Hamas and its allies, and is ostensibly pursuing an ‘absolute victory’ through total war.
The prime minister’s roadmap hinges on continuing the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. In this scenario, he envisions the Battle of Rafah as the decisive climax that will definitively render the already terminal ‘two-state solution’ obsolete and permanently sever any ties between Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
The Battle of Rafah thus emerges as a pivotal juncture, delineating two competing trajectories: one driven by regional and international efforts towards a negotiated settlement, and the other dictated solely by Netanyahu’s ambitions.
Regional ramifications and Egypt’s dilemma
This raises complex questions about whether Netanyahu can prolong the war and influence regional and international actors – to buy time, if you will – all while factoring in the delicate balance of power involving Egypt and the wider regional war against other members of the Axis of Resistance.
Indeed, the Battle of Rafah presents a multi-level challenge for Egypt, encompassing political, security, and popular dimensions. Should the Israeli army invade Rafah, it will have significant implications for Cairo’s relations with Tel Aviv, in addition to severely impacting Egypt’s domestic security landscape.
A recent poll by the Washington Institute for Near East Studies revealed that three-quarters of Egyptians view Hamas positively. This popular sentiment influences Egyptian policy regarding potential Israeli actions in Rafah.
On 10 March, TheNew York Times and Wall Street Journal reported warnings from Egyptian officials on the potential suspension of the Camp David Accords if Israel were to attack Rafah.
Diaa Rashwan, head of the Egyptian Information Service, emphasized the seriousness of Israel’s occupation of the Philadelphi Corridor – a buffer zone on the Sinai–Gaza border designated by the Camp David agreement – stating it poses a grave threat to Cairo–Tel Aviv relations.
Dealing with the potential mass influxes of Gazan civilians seeking refuge and Palestinian fighters crossing into Egyptian territory also poses significant logistical and security challenges. This scenario also raises questions about the Israeli army’s potential incursions into Egyptian territory and how the Egyptian military would respond.
Moreover, any intensification of pressure on Rafah or a full-scale Israeli invasion will lead to widespread regional ramifications, potentially including the unraveling of the Abraham Accords. The Axis of Resistance has made it clear that the elimination of Hamas is unacceptable and, if threatened, may trigger a regional war.
Complicating matters further is the lack of substantive US pressure on Israel to halt its actions in Gaza. While the Biden White House seeks a ‘credible operational plan,’ it has not unequivocally opposed an attack on Rafah. This ambivalence enables and even emboldens Netanyahu to continue his military operations.
Rafah could reshape the region
Regardless of the outcome of the Battle of Rafah, both Israeli and US perspectives interpret it as a campaign directed against Hamas, which they view as an extension of Iranian influence in the region. This narrative aligns with what Thomas Friedman, writing for the New York Times, referred to as the new “Biden Doctrine,” which emphasizes confronting Iran and its allies in West Asia. This marks a significant shift in US strategy since 1979.
The convergence of US and Israeli interests casts suspicion on ongoing efforts to bring about a long-term ceasefire, with all eyes focused on the current round of talks in Doha. Amos Harel, writing for Haaretz, frames the discussions as a race toward either a negotiated ceasefire or a potentially expansive regional conflict involving multiple fronts.
Yemen’s Ansarallah movement, which last week expanded its naval operations into the Indian Ocean, has issued a stark warning against a Rafah invasion, threatening a sharp escalation in both sea and air operations, including the closure of the Bab al-Mandab Strait.
Similarly, the Lebanese front remains sensitive to developments in Rafah. Despite the northern front’s expansion since the onset of 2024, recent Israeli attacks targeting Baalbek, over 100 kilometers from the southern border, suggest Tel Aviv’s misguided willingness to escalate.
This possibility could spill over into reality if Israel invades Rafah, as the occupation army may resort to preemptive actions to mitigate perceived threats from Lebanese resistance forces.
Overall, the Battle of Rafah will likely reshape the regional conflict, adding new layers to existing pressure fronts. Importantly, it challenges the notion that Hamas stands alone, abandoned in Rafah, as various regional actors, including Iran and its allies, are closely watching and prepared to intervene.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
Ahmed AbdulKareem is a Yemeni journalist based in Sana’a. He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News as well as local Yemeni media.
Ahmed AbdulKareem
In the courtyard of Yemen’s famous Al Shaeb Mosque, guards of honor stood at attention accompanied by the melody of military music as the funeral ceremony of Yemeni marines killed in the latest round of U.S. and UK strikes commenced. The mourners, many of whom traveled from the countryside to attend, walked alongside a long convoy carrying the bodies of 17 victims as it made its way through the streets of Sana’a. Mourners held aloft photos of the deceased or thrust their rifles into the air while chanting slogans condemning the United States. Several banners peppered the crowd, emblazoned with the label given to those who gave their lives in what many view as a struggle in defense of Palestine: “Martyrs on the road to al-Quds (Jerusalem).”
Seventeen pickup trucks ensconced in green drapes bore the bodies. They were escorted by family members alongside thousands of mourners leaving Sana’a for the hometowns of the victims who hailed from various regions of Yemen. The scene unfolded last Sunday when thousands of angry Yemenis took to the streets of Sana’a and other cities to hold a funeral for those killed by the attacks. “Retribution against American soldiers… We will not abandon our revenge,” some mourners proclaimed.
In Bani Matar, 70 kilometers west of Sanaa towards the Hodeida Road, the mothers of Ziad Ajlan and Hashem Al-Sawari watched the convoy from a rooftop as it carried along the bodies of their sons. Ziad and Hashem were not involved in the fighting; they were among a number of civilians killed in attacks launched by the U.S. Navy on the Yemeni mainland one week ago. My son was martyred on the road to al-Quds,” Ziad’s mother said proudly. “We will not be broken, and we will not abandon Gaza.”
U.S. and British officials maintain that their attacks target “Houthi” military positions – ammunition stores and missile launch sites, but the reality of the ground tells a different story. Yemeni civilians say they are blind and indiscriminate and often leave civilians maimed or killed. Assuming the U.S. and UK are acting in good faith, it is clear that their intelligence information is lacking. A truck belonging to a farmer carrying plastic pipes was targeted in an airstrike outside the city of Saada last week. It is believed that the pipes were mistaken for missiles.
This story has repeated itself ad nauseam throughout Yemen since the end of December when the multinational “Operation Prosperity Guardian” (OIR) was launched in a thus-far failed attempt to protect ships linked with Israel from Ansar Allah. This week alone, as many as 40 strikes were launched by the U.S. and the UK, most targeting the coastal city of Hodeida.
Coffins of Asnar Allah fighters killed in the U.S.-led strikes on Yemen are transported during a mass funeral in Sanaa, Yemen, Feb. 10, 2024. Osamah Abdulrahman | AP
THE FOG OF WAR
The danger of Washington’s attacks on Yemen’s mainland lies not only in exposing civilians to danger but has the potential to spark retaliatory measures taken by Ansar Allah should pressure from the public and family members of victims continue to mount.
On December 29, when U.S. forces killed 10 Yemeni sailors aboard three ships in the Red Sea, Ansar Allah refrained from retaliating. But when American and British bombs peppered mainland Yemen the next month, striking major cities with over 100 precision-guided missiles, leaving civilians dead and maimed, Ansar Allah reacted, carrying out a barrage of retaliatory attacks.
Some Yemeni officials have even hinted that two U.S. Navy Seals that the U.S. government claims drowned while boarding a boat smuggling weapons into Yemen were actually killed in combat. It is not known whether the soldiers were killed in attacks by Ansar Allah ballistic missiles or drones or during a failed commando operation as the U.S. claims, but what is clear is that the U.S. is covering its losses and information about the deaths of the Seals has been highly politicized.
In fact, many of the details surrounding hostilities between the U.S. and Ansar Allah have been cast in a heavy fog of war, and it will likely be years before the truth is revealed. What is certain is that Ansar Allah has caused direct material damage to U.S. military vessels, targeting numerous times with advanced missiles and drones launched. In the wake of every such attack, a statement was issued, reaffirming Ansar Allah’s right to take revenge for those killed in American and British bombing raids.
On January 31, the Ansar Allah announced that the American destroyer, the USS Gravely, was hit by several anti-ship missiles. In the wake of the attack, US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced that the Gravely had shot down an advanced anti-ship cruise missile. Later, reports emerged that the destroyer in question and other Western military assets in the area had failed to intercept the missile until it got within “4 seconds from hitting the U.S. warship.”
On January 25, Ansar Allah said that it had clashed with American destroyers in the Gulf of Aden and Bab al-Mandab for two hours. One U.S. Navy vessel was directly hit after a failed interception attempt, according to Ansar Allah, who have been improving their capabilities since 2014, after a failed Saudi-led and U.S.-backed bombing campaign left the country in tatters.
This undated photograph released by CENTCOM shows the vessel that was being boarded by US Navy Seals near Yemen in a raid that saw two commandos go missing
MANUFACTURING CONSENT
Although President Joe Biden has repeatedly claimed that the United States does not seek to expand the war in the Middle East, the actions of the US military are undoubtedly making the situation in the Red Sea more tense. In the wake of American airstrikes targeting Hodeida on Thursday – for the ninth time that day alone, Ansar Allah Armed Forces spokesperson Brigadier Yahya Saree revealed that the group would take “further measures” within its legitimate right to self-defense in response to the repeated U.S.-UK aggression. In the same statement, Saree announced that the Barbados-flagged British Bulk Carrier ship, the LYCAVITOS, was targeted by naval missiles while sailing in the Gulf of Aden, raising questions about the actual deterrence factor of America’s escalatory approach.
Prior to that, the leader of Ansar Allah, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the leader of the revolution that the U.S.-backed Yemeni government in 2014, confirmed that any escalation on Ansar Allah’s part would be against Israel and to confront American and British aggression and would not target the interests of ordinary Westerners. The comment came in response to claims circulated in the media that Ansar Allah could sabotage a network of underwater internet cables that run through the Red Sea. “We do not plan to target submarine cables, and we have no intention of doing so, and what is reported in the media is a lie aimed at distorting our humanitarian position on the war on Gaza,” he said. Many Western media outlets promoted the claim, raising fears over the safety of infrastructure critical to the functioning of the Western Internet and the transmission of financial data. Yemen is strategically located, as internet lines connecting entire continents pass near it.
Airstrikes and claims that internet access may be cut off may be the tip of the escalatory iceberg, according to the government of Sana’a. The Minister of Information, Daifallah al-Shami, held a press conference on Thursday announcing that they have information that the UAE is seeking to recruit agents from multiple foreign nationalities in cooperation with Al-Qaeda and ISIS to target ships in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea in order to confuse and distort operations carried out by Ansar Allah in support of Gaza. According to al-Shami, the move is supported by the U.S.
“WE WILL NOT ABANDON GAZA”
Contrary to what is being promoted in much of the Western media, which has taken the line that Ansar Allah’s Red Sea blockade has nothing to do with the ongoing genocide in Gaza, a review of the targets of Ansar Allah’s attacks makes their motivations clear. On October 19, Ansar Allah fired drones and missiles at Israel’s southern Eliat Port. In mid-November, the naval forces seized an Israeli ship headed towards occupied Palestine. Shortly after, Ansar Allah publically announced that the Israeli-linked ship would not be allowed to pass through the Baba al-Mandab Strait. Later, they announced that the ban on shipping would extend to all vessels attempting to reach Eliat Port. All of these measures were in support of a single, repeatedly declared goal, which was to pressure Israel to stop its war on Gaza and allow food and water to enter the besieged strip.
With visible sadness and anger, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi enumerated in a televised speech on Tuesday the reasons that motivate Yemen to continue operations to prevent international navigation supporting Israel in the Red Sea – the continued mass killing of the Gazans, renewed American support for Israel, including with lethal weapons and the use of internationally banned weapons against civilians in Gaza, including white phosphorus.
Al-Houthi said that “the Yemeni military’s retaliatory strikes in the Red Sea had proven to be effective as it led to the almost complete closure of the port of Umm al-Rashrash (the name of Eliat before Israel annexed it), and all food supply chains to Israel that were passing through the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab stopped by 70%, and prices in the Israeli market rose by 30-50% after ships were forced to divert course through the Cape of Good Hope.” Israel, he noted, was one of the largest beneficiaries of maritime trade, with imports in 2022 reaching to $133 billion “thanks to the Red Sea.”
Responding to those who question the feasibility of Ansar Allah’s position, Al-Houthi said that “Yemeni operations have caused repercussions for ship insurance,” noting that insurers are now refusing to insure ships heading towards the ports of occupied Palestine. “Not only that,” he added, “but insurance companies require Israeli and American ships to pay additional amounts of up to 50%.”
“Our operations at sea led to a decline in Israel’s total imports of products by 25% during the past months,” Al-Houthi said, “The Israeli Ministry of Economy and Industry admitted that the Red Sea operations harmed its trade relations with 14 countries.”
Amid threats of escalation and even whispers of a Western-led ground invasion of Yemen, Ansar Allah has reiterated its commitment to its mission. Mobilization, military training, demonstrations, and other activities will be continued as long as the aggression against Gaza continues, it has reaffirmed, saying that operations at sea will continue until Israel “allows food and medical supplies and the delivery of basic needs into Gaza.” “The U.S. and UK will not achieve their goals through aggression against our country, and the only solution is to stop the aggression and deliver food and medicine to the people of Gaza,” Al-Houthi vowed.
The Navy destroyer Carney struck a radar site in Yemen on Saturday, officials said. The warship is shown here intercepting Yemeni drones and missiles in the Red Sea in October. (Photo credit: Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Aaron Lau/Navy)
The attacks come after the US bombing of Syria and Iraq, indicating the White House is escalating its war against the Axis of Resistance in defense of Israel’s genocide on Gaza
US and UK warships and fighter jets bombed Yemen on 4 February, in a wave of missile strikes US officials claim hit 36 targets.
The US said in a CENTCOM statement that it hit “36 targets at 13 locations,” striking “underground storage facilities, command and control, missile systems, UAV storage and operations sites, radars, and helicopters.”
According to the statement, the US, UK, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and New Zealand took part in the attacks.
The strikes were in response to Yemeni efforts to target Israeli-linked commercial ships passing through the narrow Bab al-Mandab Strait in the Red Sea. The Yemeni attacks are in response to Israel’s genocidal bombing campaign in Gaza.
Rather than press its ally Israel to stop its military campaign, which has killed over 27,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children, the US has joined forces with the UK to bomb Yemen.
"Even if you burn down Sanaa, America… we will remain with Gaza."
Amid violent, renewed airstrikes by the US and UK, a man in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, says the Yemenis will continue to support Gaza no matter what. pic.twitter.com/Uag8M0uBaq
Saturday’s strikes were launched by US F/A-18 fighter jets from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier, British Typhoon FGR4 fighter aircraft, and the Navy destroyers USS Gravely and the USS Carney firing Tomahawk missiles from the Red Sea, according to US officials and the UK Defense Ministry.
The Yemen Armed Forces issued a statement detailing where the attacks took place, reporting 13 raids on Sanaa, 9 on Hodeidah, 11 on Taiz, 7 on Al-Bayda, 7 on Hajjah, and one on Saada.
“These attacks will not deter us from our moral, religious, and humanitarian stance in support of the steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, and will not go unanswered and punished,” read the statement.
The strikes come one day after the US sent B-1 bombers to target 85 locations affiliated with the Islamic Resistance of Iraq in eastern Syria and western Iraq, killing at least 16. This was in response to an operation by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq that targeted US military outpost Tower 22 in Jordan last week, killing three US soldiers.
US officials reportedly told Al-Jazeera that the strikes on Yemen are “considered a next round of retaliation for the killing of the [US] soldiers in Jordan.”
Like Ansarallah, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq coalition, formed after 7 October, has also targeted Israel, as well as US bases in Syria and Iraq. The groups say their attacks are in response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which the US has supported militarily and diplomatically.
Ansarallah leaders in Yemen say they have no intention of scaling back their campaign despite pressure from the US and UK bombing.
Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, an Ansarallah official, said, “military operations against Israel will continue until the crimes of genocide in Gaza are stopped and the siege on its residents is lifted, no matter the sacrifices it costs us.” He wrote on social media that the “American-British aggression against Yemen will not go unanswered, and we will meet escalation with escalation.”
Following Israel’s war and siege against Gaza, which began in earnest on October 7 of last year and has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians, the Yemeni Army led by Ansar Allah declared a military operation against Israel. Its aim: to compel Tel Aviv to cease its destructive war on Gaza.
No stranger to famine, genocide, and the displacement of civilians thanks to a decade-long war waged against its people led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and backed by the United States, Ansar Allah has led arguably the most consequential resistance to Israel’s bloody campaign in the Gaza Strip, taking the bold and unprecedented step of targeting Israeli-owned, flagged, or operated ships in the Red Sea and Arabian Sea.
Ansar Allah, known colloquially in the West as the Houthis, declared the actions a response to the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza and pledged to cease targeting Israeli-connected ships as soon as Israel’s aggression ceases. This mantra has been repeated by Ansar Allah leaders since the onset of its campaign and was confirmed to MintPress by Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, head of Yemen’s Houthi supreme revolutionary committee, a prominent member of the Ansar Allah movement and a key decision-maker in Yemen’s Sana’a based government.
In response to Ansar Allah’s campaign against Israel, Western powers, particularly the United States, deployed a large flotilla of warships under the pretext of protecting international freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Dismissed in much of the Western media as little more than pirates or an Iranian-backed militia. Western audiences rarely have the opportunity to hear the unfiltered perspective of Ansar Allah’s own leaders. For this reason, MintPress News correspondent Ahmed Abdul-Kareem sat down with Ansar Allah’s second-in-command, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, to discuss recent events in Yemen, Gaza and the Middle East.
MintPress News: What is Ansar Allah’s position on the killing of three American soldiers and the wounding of more than thirty soldiers in the attack that targeted Tower 22? And before that, two U.S. Navy Seals that the U.S. claims died while drowning? What is Ansar Allah’s official position about their deaths?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: The attacks – which we consider a natural reaction to the hostile actions carried out by the United States- are a clear message about the great extent of discontent in the Arab world towards the Americans due to their wrong policies, including the adoption of genocide in Gaza and the aggression on Yemen that puts their soldiers and interests in danger.
The Americans must understand that whoever attacks others will receive a response. As the Arab proverb says: “Whoever knocks on the door will find an answer.”
Regarding the two soldiers you mentioned in the other half of the question, that version of the incident is an American one. We do not trust what America announces. But if the American account is true, there is perhaps a major crime that the Americans are trying to conceal. They revealed the news of their soldiers in order to hide something worse. It is unreasonable for a fully prepared military force not to know where their colleagues have gone. The event is ambiguous. It must be investigated to expose what America is hiding.
MintPress News: You are suffering in Yemen from the repercussions of a war that has lasted for more than eight years, and despite that, you have taken an advanced military and political position in solidarity with Gaza. Why take this position, and how what is your reaction to U.S. and British government statements claiming that your position has nothing to do with Gaza?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: First, our position is religious and humanitarian, and we see a tremendous injustice. We know the size and severity of these massacres committed against the people of Gaza. We have suffered from American-Saudi-Emirati terrorism in a coalition that has launched a war and imposed a blockade against us that is still ongoing. Therefore, we move from this standpoint and do not want the same crime to be repeated. We respond to the demand of our people, who take to the streets every Friday in millions to demonstrate. We also respond to masses in Arab and Islamic nations and to all free people who ask us to defend their Palestinian brothers.
We cannot see the tragic humanitarian situation in Gaza, which has even been recognized by the International Court of Justice as a genocide, and do nothing. Therefore, our move is in this direction: to confront the arrogant ones who confront the oppressed. The oppressed are in a dire situation and endure horrific human suffering because of Israel and the United States, to such a point that they suspended their support for UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees], when instead they should have increased support for it so that it could continue to provide loaves of bread to Palestinians.
MintPress News: Western media represents the blockade of the Red Sea as threatening freedom of navigation for all ships traveling through it. Is this accurate? If not, what countries are allowed to use the Bab al-Mandab Strait without problems, and how does Ansar Allah determine which ships can pass and which are stopped?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: There is no blockade of the Red Sea, and what is being promoted in the Western media that we are targeting international navigation in the Red Sea and endangering international trade is not true. Navigation through the Red Sea is safe for all ships except those linked to Israel. Until recently, 4,874 ships have safely crossed since we announced our operations. Approximately 70 ships pass through Bab al-Mandab [Strait] daily without harm.
We have constantly confirmed that the ships being targeted are only ships linked to “Israel,” whether by heading to the occupied ports or those [ships] owned by Israelis or ships entering the port of Umm al-Rashrash [Eilat port]. The Yemeni Armed Forces repeatedly confirms that all ships with no connection to “Israel” will not be harmed. This is what the official spokesman of the Army repeatedly confirms in all issued statements about the naval operations of the Yemeni Armed Forces.
We do not want Bab al-Mandab to be closed, nor for the Red Sea to be closed. This is evidenced by the fact that we have limited ourselves to targeting Israeli ships and ships heading to the occupied Palestinian territories. If we had wanted to close Bab al-Mandab, there would have been other measures, some of which were easier than launching missiles.
In fact, what is being promoted in the Western media is the result of American deception, which is keen to spread false narratives about the events so that they become dominant in the international media. The United States demonizes us through the media by pumping out its incorrect narratives, even though they, and the British, are the devils who refuse to stop the genocide in Gaza and lift the siege on its people. They are militarizing the Red Sea and are continuing the escalation and aggression against Yemen.
As for how ships heading to Israel are identified, this is based on accurate information from the Yemeni Ministry of Defense. If the ship is linked to Israel, it is warned that it must not pass through the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait. If it rejects the warning – after announcing, clarifying and giving signals for it to stop and return – it will be targeted. No ship that was not heading to Israeli ports has been targeted, according to the military data that we trust. And neither the Americans nor the British have been able to prove otherwise.
MintPress News: Are there communication channels that ships can use to avoid danger while passing through Bab al-Mandab, the Red Sea in general, the Arabian Sea, and the Gulf of Aden?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: The Navy confirms this and always repeats it in its [public] statements that there is channel Number 16 through which communication can take place. We tell shipping companies (we talked to them directly) that there is a simple solution they can use, where they can write the phrase, “We have no relation to Israel,” and pass safely. We also encourage them to use Digital Selective Calling [Digital Selective Calling is a technology used in marine communication for sending distress signals. It functions like a digital “call button” on maritime radios].
MintPress News: Western countries say that its operations in the Red Sea are to maintain the security and safety of international navigation. What is your reaction to this?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: It is America that is endangering international navigation by establishing what it calls the “Prosperity Alliance” to protect Israeli ships, even though a more appropriate name for it would be the “Alliance of Destruction, Militarization of the Red Sea, and Expansion of Conflict.”
Its warnings, its repeated media terrorism, and its delivery of messages and calls to ships are the actions that harm global navigation and trade, in addition to its military attacks on our country.
The White House tries to mislead the world by spreading the rumor that passing through Bab al-Mandab is unsafe. It puts pressure on international shipping companies that have no link to Israel not to pass through the Red Sea. This is done to fuel discontent against Yemenis and serve the criminal [Benjamin] Netanyahu. We call on them to stop these acts and to turn to the best solution, which is to stop the aggression and lift the siege on the people of Gaza. The Yemeni Armed Forces did not target American and British ships except in response to their aggression and attacks on our country. Prior to that, the leader of the revolution [Ansar Allah leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi] warned them not to get involved in Yemen.
MintPress News: What is the true nature of U.S./UK airstrikes against Ansar Allah? Are they really causing damage, and what are they actually targeting? Have any Yemeni civilians died in these attacks?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: Firstly, the American-British aggression against Yemen is not anything new. These two countries have been practicing aggression against the Republic of Yemen since 2015. These are the same actions. We are not afraid of the U.S.’s escalation. If the two countries decide to invade by land, they will face harsh lessons even worse than those they faced in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Yemeni people love freedom, are warriors and are well-armed. The army is well-prepared, and Yemenis have many options to inflict a strategic defeat on Americans in the region.
The American-British raids targeted populated cities, including Sana’a, Saada, Hodeidah, Hajjah, and Dhamar. Before that, they targeted our patrols in the Red Sea, and a number of naval forces were martyred. The strikes had no effect, and what is said about their influence is a baseless illusion and a failure, thanks to Allah Almighty.
Through their aggression at sea and their strikes, the Americans and British are defending criminals in the continuation of genocide in Palestine and the killing of civilians by the Israeli enemy without disturbance.
On the other hand, our position in the Republic of Yemen defends humanity. Our operation is carried out to stop the genocide and to stop the killing. Our choice is humanity’s choice, and it is the right choice for which we make sacrifices. The Americans must take the warnings of the leader [Ansar Allah leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi] seriously.
MintPress News: There is talk in U.S. and UK political circles about escalating the war on Yemen, possibly even talk of a ground invasion of the country. What is Ansar Allah’s reaction to this, and how does Asnar Allah plan to expand military operations if the US and UK escalate?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: A ground war is what the Yemeni people wish for because they will be confronted with those who have caused their suffering for more than nine years. It will be a chance for revenge. As the leader of the revolution [Ansar Allah leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi] said, “To be known to America, if they send their soldiers to Yemen, they will face something harsher than what they faced in Afghanistan and what they had suffered in Vietnam. We have the strength to confront the enemy and remain steadfast; our people have withstood nine years in the face of the massive aggression.”
MintPress News: What is your position on the Biden administration’s decision to classify Ansar Allah as a terrorist organization? Does this decision have repercussions for you?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: Designating us as terrorists because we support Gaza is an honor and pride. It is also political, immoral, and has no justification. The U.S. move does not affect us. We do not enter U.S. territory. We also do not have companies or bank balances abroad. They know the designation will not affect our humanitarian or ethical processes or decisions.The solution lies in stopping the aggression against Gaza and allowing food and medicine to enter.
MintPress News: Western countries refer to Ansar Allah as the Houthis. Why do you believe they do this, and what are the fundamental differences between “Houthi” and “Ansar Allah”?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: Ansar Allah, as defined by the leader, is not an organization, political party, or group, as some people promote. They are not framed or structured. Even when the leader of martyrs, Sayyid Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi [the founder of Ansar Allah], began to form the organization, he did not form a unit according to internationally known procedures (such as registration centers or granting membership cards), like most organizations, groups, and parties do. Rather, he presented a project in which the masses of various political orientations, affiliations, and societal segments moved within the framework of the positions included in this project. So you could say we are a widespread popular movement.
Our name, Ansar Allah, comes from a Quranic title that expresses a practical response to the directives of Almighty Allah according to the methodology of the Holy Quran. We always strive to be ِAnsar Allah by bearing the nation’s issues that must be supported for the sake of Allah.
The name “Houthis” is not a name we apply to ourselves. We refuse to be called Houthis. It is not from us. It is a name given to us by our enemies in an attempt to frame the broad masses in Yemeni society that belong to our project. Indeed, these attempts have failed. Our people were not affected by this designation or other negative propaganda. The leader referred to this in one of his last speeches.
MintPress News: Western countries accuse Ansar Allah of being a tool of Iran. Western media reported recently that the U.S. asked China to pressure Iran to stop Ansar Allah from their blockade of the Red Sea. What is the truth behind this matter, and what is Ansar Allah’s relationship with Iran?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: In his speech last Thursday, [Ansar Allah leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi] confirmed that U.S. and British strikes are failures and have no impact [on us] and will not limit our military capabilities. He considered that “America’s attempt to request assistance from China to persuade us to stop our operations in support of Palestine is one of the signs of its failure.”
He also pointed out that “The Chinese will not involve themselves in serving America because they realize that it is in their interest not to follow America. China knows America’s hostile policies against it. It knows very well the extent of the American conspiracy through the Taiwan dilemma.”
Although it is the accusers who are required to prove what they say, we confirm the American allegations as illusions. Our decision is in our own hands, and the Americans and Israelis know that. If they have any accusation against Iran, that is their business. Iran is a sovereign state. We do not like to bother responding to enemies. We do not care about the enemy’s words as long as we take the right position.
MintPress News: There has been a truce between Ansar Allah and the Saudi-led coalition in conjunction with negotiations currently taking place through Omani mediators. Had peace in Yemen been used as a point of pressure to stop your operations in the Red Sea? Who is obstructing the peace process and an agreement between Yemeni parties?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: First, there is no truce but de-escalation. We hope political work will continue to achieve lasting peace for the Republic of Yemen and lift the siege.
Secondly, we have received many indirect messages and threats from the United States, including opening internal combat fronts, moving fronts, obstructing peace, stopping aid, etc., because of the position of the Yemeni people who refuse to allow for the extermination of the people of Gaza.
We are peace lovers. We want to build the Republic of Yemen. We’d like there to be peace. So, our operations in the Red Sea are within the framework of the search for peace for our brothers in Palestine.
But who has prevented peace in Yemen for nine years? Wasn’t it America that threatened to obstruct it? Yes, it was, as previously explained.
We presented a vision for a comprehensive solution [in Yemen], which was published in the media and delivered to the United Nations.
Recently, a paper [was published] whose points were agreed upon [by all parties], and the ones who obstructed it were the Americans. Just as Washington has done in previous rounds [of negotiations], it is obstructing peace right now.
Notice that, although they [the United States] talk about peace in Palestine, they use their veto power to prevent an end to the war. In Yemen, they talk about peace while at the same time launching [military] operations against the people of the Republic of Yemen.
MintPress News: Are there direct negotiation channels between Ansar Allah and the Americans? How can future negotiations be conducted to reduce the escalation in the region?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: We have not yet negotiated with the Americans directly. Although we have been asked to have direct negotiations, we have refused. We do not believe that we can engage in dialogue with the Americans because we see them as terrorist criminals who do everything to continue crimes and massacres. If the Americans hope to communicate [with us], it must be through our brothers in the Sultanate of Oman with our negotiating team there. This is the only way in which dialogue can take place.
MintPress News: Ansar Allah has stated many times that the reason for their blockade is to stand in solidarity and help the people of Gaza. What must Israel do for Ansar Allah to halt any blockade or attacks against Israeli interests?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: You must know that we have never resorted to carrying out operations in the Red Sea before, even though we were subjected to a major war supported mainly by the United States, but we do so now to stop the genocide in Gaza. Our operations will stop immediately as soon as medicine and food enter Gaza and the aggression is stopped. Until this noble humanitarian goal is achieved, the armed air, sea, and land forces will continue to target Israeli, American, and British ships. You see, the equation and solution is simple: let food and medicine reach the people of Gaza, and the aggression will be stopped.
MintPress News: Both the United States and Britain have repeatedly stated that what they are doing in the Red Sea is self-defense and to protect international navigation. What is your reaction to these statements?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: The truth is that Washington and London are bombing people thousands of miles away from their lands. They are carrying out aggression against an independent country that is a member of the United Nations without justification, legitimacy, or legal reference for what they are doing. They are carrying out aggression against Yemen only to protect the Israeli enemy. It is certain and clearly visible that they are not in a state of defense. They could have said that if their ships were being attacked off the coast of Florida or London.
In addition, their aggression has no moral or humanitarian justification, as they came to defend criminals so that Israel can continue committing more genocide in Palestine and killing civilians.
The American and British [people] should know that the administrations in the United States and Britain do not care about the safety of international navigation in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the Arabian Sea. They only care about [Benjamin] Netanyahu, encouraging him to continue the genocide of the people of Gaza, even if at the expense of their people’s interests and the lives of their soldiers.
So we say to them: You are the ones who came to ignite the region, you are the ones working to threaten navigation, and you are the ones bringing danger and terrorism to the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, or the Gulf of Aden. You must stop these practices and return to where you came from. The Red Sea belongs to neither the United States nor the British. It is clear to us that America’s policies are hostile. It has ambitions in the China Sea, it has ambitions in the Red Sea, and it also competes with Russia in the Arctic.
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The Gaza war and renewed US–UK strikes on Yemen are shattering what remains of the UAE–Saudi-led coalition. Now Yemenis of all stripes are flocking to embrace the Sanaa government and its resistance stance.
While the Red Sea military operations of Yemeni resistance movement Ansarallah have shaken up geopolitical calculations of Israel’s war on Gaza, they have also had far-reaching consequences on the country’s internal political and military dynamics.
By successfully obstructing Israeli vessels from traversing the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait, the Ansarallah-led Sanaa government has emerged as a powerful symbol of resistance in defense of the Palestinian people – a cause deeply popular across Yemen’s many demographics. Sanaa’s position stands in stark contrast to that of the Saudi and Emirati-backed government in Aden, which, to the horror of Yemenis, welcomed attacks by US and British forces on 12 January.
The US–UK airstrikes have offended Yemenis fairly universally, prompting some heavyweight internal defections. Quite suddenly, Sanaa has transformed into a destination for a number of Yemeni militias previously aligned with the UAE and Saudi Arabia, now publicly declaring their allegiance to Ansarallah.
One such figure, Colonel Hussein al-Qushaybi, formerly with the Saudi–UAE coalition forces, announced in a tweet:
I am Colonel Hussein al-Qushaybi, I declare my resignation from my rank and my defection from the Legitimacy Army [army backed by Saudi-led coalition] that did not allow us, as members of the Ministry of Defense, to show solidarity with Palestine. My message to army members: Go back to your homes, for our leaders have begun to protect Zionist ships at sea and support the [Israeli] entity, even if they try to deceive, but their support has become clear and it is still there.
Qushaybi claims he was incarcerated in Saudi prisons for 50 days – along with other Yemeni officers – for his outspoken defense of Gaza, during which he endured torture and interrogation by an Israeli intelligence officer.
Major Hammam al-Maqdishi, responsible for personal protection of Yemen’s former Defense Minister in the coalition-backed government, has also arrived in Sanaa, pledging allegiance to Ansarallah.
Simultaneously, a leaked ‘top-secret’ document from the Saudi-backed, UN-recognized Yemeni Ministry of Defense instructs military leaders to suppress any sympathy or support for Hamas or Ansarallah, as “this might arouse the ire of brotherly and friendly countries” – an implicit reference to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Defections and dissent
The wave of defections within the ranks of Saudi–Emirati coalition forces is not limited to officers. Many regular troops have openly rebelled against their commanders – abandoning their positions and pledging allegiance to Ansarallah – following the recent airstrikes on Yemen. Dozens of these soldiers have been arrested and detained for displaying solidarity with Gaza.
Yemeni news reports claim the US government, in a missive to the coalition’s Chief of Staff Saghir bin Aziz, expressed “dissatisfaction” with the lack of solidarity among his forces and demanded action.
While this trend of defections in the Saudi–Emirati coalition is not entirely new, it has acceleratedconsiderably since the onset of the war in Gaza and the recent US-UK strikes on Yemen.
Last February, high-ranking coalition officers, including brigade commanders from various fronts, began a series of defections, though none as significant as the current rebellion.
These earlier defections were primarily driven by financial conditions and dissatisfaction with Saudi Arabia and the UAE for their dismissal ofmilitary commanders associated with the Islah Party (Muslim Brotherhood in Yemen), who were replaced by members of the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) militias and those commanded by Tariq Saleh, nephew of pro-Saudi former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Most of these defections were by officer and troops associated with the Islah Party during a time when the foreign coalition began marginalizing the party’s military and political leadership, and dismantling several military sectors under their control – in favor of the UAE-controlled STC.
Now, the Gaza war has the Islah Party leadership fully breaking with its old alliances. As party official Mukhtar al-Rahbi tweeted upon the launch of US-UK strikes:
Any Yemeni who stands with the US, UK, and the countries of the coalition protecting Zionist ships should reconsider their Yemeni identity and Arab affiliation. These countries protect and support the Zionist entity, and when Yemen closed the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea to the ships of this terrorist entity, this dirty alliance struck Yemen and punished it for its noble stance towards Gaza and Palestine.
In stark contrast, the UAE-backed STC and the Tareq Saleh-led National Resistance Forces expressed readiness to protect Israeli interests. On the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, STC President Aidarus al-Zoubaidi reaffirmed his support for the British attacks against Yemen, conveying this stance to British Foreign Secretary David Cameron.
Following these statements, an entire battalion under Saleh’s command defected to Ansarallah, while many other fighters now refuse his authority because they reject supporting US–UK strikes against Sanaa and its resistance leaders.
A shift in public sentiment
In response to the latest western aggression against Yemen, media outlets affiliated with the STC and its supporters have launched a campaign against Ansarallah and the Palestinian resistance, casting doubt on the Yemeni resistance movement’s capabilities and motives. But, their efforts have backfired badly, instead leading to widespread public fury in the country’s southern regions controlled by the UAE and Saudi-backed government.
Map of areas controlled by Ansarallah and Saudi-led coalition
Their anger is directed at the Aden-based government‘s perceived alignment with Israel’s regional projects, sparking both protests and symbolic acts, such as burning pictures of UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed and the Israeli flag.
According to Fernando Carvajal, a former member of the UN Security Council’s Yemen expert team, Ansarallah have managed to leverage – to their benefit – the untenable position of Abu Dhabi, which normalized relationswith Israel as part of the 2020 US-brokered Abraham Accords. This, he argues, has helped them gain widespread support both within Yemen and internationally.
In the wake of this unexpected public outrage, the STC has experienced a further wave of defections within its ranks. Several leaders have joined the Southern Revolutionary Movement, and openly expressed their objective of liberating southern Yemen from what they see as “Saudi–Emirati occupation.”
Amidst the wave of military realignments, prominent Al-Mahra tribal Sheikh Ali al-Huraizi – arguably the most influential figure in eastern Yemen – has come out to praise Ansarallah’s military operations against Israel-bound shipping in the Red Sea, hailing its actions as a resolute and national response to the suffering of the Palestinian people.
Huraizi stressed that the US and British aggression against Yemen was launched to protect the Zionist state, because Ansarallah’s targeted strikes were negatively impacting Israel’s economy. Calling for unity among Yemenis, the tribal leader urged steadfast resistance against Israeli influence in the country. He also called on other Yemeni factions to follow the bold leadership of Abdul-Malik al-Houthi as a means to halt the genocide taking place in Gaza.
Countdown to the coalition’s collapse
Yemen’s deteriorating economic conditions,currency collapse in coalition-ruled areas, and ongoing conflicts among southern militias have left many Yemenis disillusioned with Emirati and Saudi proxies, whom they had hoped would bring – at the very least – economic prosperity.
In contrast, the Ansarallah-led Sanaa government has managed to maintain a relatively stable economic situation in the areas under its control, despite the foreign-backed war aimed at toppling it. This disparity has led to a growing sentiment among UAE-aligned soldiers that they are merely pawns fighting for the interests of Persian Gulf Arab rulers, without receiving due recognition from these governments.
The contrasting stances on Palestine between the coalition and Ansarallah have deepened the Yemeni divide since the events of 7 October. Sanaa’s support for the Palestinian cause has significantly boosted its domestic standing, while US–UK strikes on the country have complicated their Persian Gulf allies’ position by prioritizing Israeli interests over all other calculations.
Disillusionment with the coalition will have profound political and military implications for Yemen, reshaping alliances, and casting the UAE and Saudi Arabia as national adversaries. Palestine continues to serve as a revealing litmus test throughout West Asia – and now in Yemen too – exposing those who only-rhetorically claim the mantle of justice and Arab solidarity.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
The Yemeni Armed Forces spokesperson, Yahya Saree, announced in a statement that the Yemeni Armed Forces targeted an American ship using ballistic and naval missiles, as well as drones.
The spokesperson for the Yemeni Armed Forces announced that the Navy, the Missile Force, and the Drone Air Force in the Yemeni Armed Forces, “executed a joint military operation involving a large number of ballistic and naval missiles and drones, targeting an American ship that was providing support to the Zionist entity.”
According to the spokesperson, the operation also marked the “initial response” of the Yemeni Armed Forces following the US attack on Yemeni Forces, earlier, which resulted in the martyrdom of 10 members of the Yemeni Navy.
Moreover, during the press release, Saree stressed that “the Yemeni Armed Forces affirm that they will not hesitate to appropriately deal with all hostile threats under the legitimate right of defending our country, our people, and our nation.”
To conclude the press briefing, he reminded the world that the Yemeni Armed Forces would continue to stand with Palestine and “prevent Israeli ships or those headed to the ports of occupied Palestine from navigating in the Arabian and Red Seas until the aggression stops and the siege on our steadfast brothers in the Gaza Strip is lifted.”
بهدف خلط الأوراق وإعطاء المبررات للأمريكيين لعسكرة البحر الأحمر تقوم الإمارات عبر مرتزقتها في اليمن بترتيبات لاستهداف السفن التجارية التي ليست متجهة إلى الكيان الصهيوني. لكن نقول لها بأن أسلوبها الحقير مفضوح ومكشوف فعملياتنا في البحرين الأحمر والعربي محددة الأهداف واضحة المعالم.
The maritime routes for all other vessels and purposes continue to be safe and secured by the Yemeni Armed Forces.
UAE to target non-Israeli related ships & pin it on Yemen: Ansar Allah
The Secretary-General of the Ansar Allah Movement’s Political Bureau, Fadl Abu Talib, revealed on Tuesday, that “the UAE, through its mercenaries in Yemen, is making arrangements to target commercial ships not destined for the Israeli occupation entity.”
Abu Talib, in a post on X, confirmed that the UAE is doing this “to shuffle the cards and provide the Americans with justification to militarize the Red Sea.”
The Ansar Allah official also stressed that “the UAE’s despicable method is blatant and exposed,” and that “our operations in the Red and Arabian Seas have specific and clear objectives.”
The new US-led coalition in the Red Sea will struggle to overcome Yemen’s naval blockade on Israel, as Ansarallah’s domestically-produced and inexpensive drones and missiles have leveled the technological playing field.
Given the renewed focus on Yemen’s de facto government led by Ansarallah and its armed forces, it is time to move beyond the simplistic and dismissive characterization of the Houthis as merely a ‘rebel’ group or a non-state actor.
Since the start of the war by the Saudi-led coalition against Ansarallah in 2015, the Yemeni resistance movement has transformed into a formidable military force that has not only humbled Saudi Arabia but is also now challenging Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza as well as the superior firepower and resources of the US Navy in the world’s most important waterway.
Economic fallout of Yemen’s naval operations
In response to Israel unleashing unprecedented violence on Gaza, killing over 20,000 people, predominantly women and children, Yemen’s Ansarallah-led armed forces announced on 14 November their intent to target any Israeli-linked ship passing through the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait in the Red Sea. This crucial waterway serves as the gateway to the Suez Canal, through which approximately 10 percent of global trade and 8.8 million barrels of oil travel each day.
On 9 December, Ansarallah announced it would expand its operations further to target any ship in the Red Sea on its way to Israel, regardless of its nationality. “If Gaza does not receive the food and medicine it needs, all ships in the Red Sea bound for Israeli ports, regardless of their nationality, will become a target for our armed forces,” an Ansarallah Armed Forces spokesperson said in a statement.
To date, Ansarallah has successfully targeted nine ships using drones and missiles, and managed to seize one Israeli-affiliated ship in the Red Sea, according to their official statements. These operations have prompted the largest international shipping companies, including CMA CGM and MSC, and oil giants BP and Evergreen, to re-route their Europe bound ships around the horn of Africa, adding 13,000km and significant fuel costs to the journey.
Delays, transit times, and insurance fees for commercial shipping have skyrocketed, threatening to spark inflation worldwide. This is especially worrisome for Israel, which is already contending with the economic repercussions of its longest and deadliest conflict with the Palestinian resistance in history.
Additionally, Ansarallah has launched multiple missile and drone attacks on Israel’s southern port city of Eilat, decreasing its commercial shipping traffic by 85 percent.
The disruption in the Red Sea directly undermines a key element of the White House’s 2022 National Security Strategy, which unequivocally states that the US will not permit any nation “to jeopardize freedom of navigation through the Middle East’s waterways, including the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab.”
Coalition of the unwilling
On 18 December, in response to Sanaa’s operations, Secretary of State Lloyd Austin declared the establishment of a naval coalition named Operation Prosperity Guardian, with some 20 countries called to counter Yemeni attacks and ensure safe passage of ships through the Red Sea.
Austin announced the new maritime coalition would include, among others, Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Norway, the Netherlands, the Seychelles, and Bahrain.
Map of the US-led Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) in West Asia and North Africa.
In response to the announcement, Ansarallah politburo Mohammed al-Bukhaiti vowed that Yemen’s armed forces would not back down:
“Yemen awaits the creation of the filthiest coalition in history to engage in the holiest battle in history. How will the countries that rushed to form an international coalition against Yemen to protect the perpetrators of Israeli genocide be perceived?“
The embarrassment for Secretary Austin and White House advisor Jake Sullivan was swift. Shortly after the coalition’s announcement, key US allies Saudi Arabia and Egypt declined participation. European allies Denmark, Holland, and Norway provided minimal support, sending only a handful of naval officers.
France agreed to participate but refused to deploy additional ships to the region or place its existing vessel there under US command. Italy and Spain refuted claims of their participation, and eight countries remained anonymous, casting doubt on their existence.
Ansarallah has therefore destroyed another pillar of the White House National Security Strategy, which seeks “to promote regional integration by building political, economic, and security connections between and among US partners, including through integrated air and maritime defense structures.”
Revolutions in naval warfare
The Pentagon plans to defend commercial ships using missile defense systems on US and allied naval carriers deployed to the region.
But the world’s superpower, now largely on its own, does not have the military capacity to counter attacks from war-torn Yemen, the poorest country in West Asia.
This is because the US relies on expensive and difficult to manufacture interceptor missiles to counter the inexpensive and mass-produced drones and missiles that Ansarallah possesses.
Austin made his announcement shortly after the USS Carney destroyer intercepted 14 one-way attack drones on just one day, the 16th of December.
The operation appeared to be a success, but Politico swiftly reported that according to three US Defense Department officials, the cost of countering such attacks “is a growing concern.”
The SM-2 missiles used by the USS Carney cost roughly $2.1 million each, while Ansarallah’s one-way attack drones cost a mere $2,000 each.
This means that to shoot down the $28,000 worth of drones on 16 December, the US spent at least $28 million in just one day.
Ansarallah has now launched more than 100 drone and missile attacks, targeting ten commercial ships from 35 countries, meaning the cost of US interceptor missiles alone has exceeded $200 million.
But cost is not the only limitation. If Ansarallah persists with this strategy, US forces will quickly deplete their interceptor missile stocks, which are needed not only in West Asia but in East Asia as well.
As Fortis Analysis observed, the US has eight guided missile cruisers and destroyers operating in the Mediterranean and Red Seas, with a total of 800 SM-2 and SM-6 interceptor missiles for ship defense between them. Fortis Analysis further notes that production of these missiles is slow, meaning any ongoing campaign to counter Ansarallah will quickly deplete US interceptor missile stocks to dangerously low levels. Meanwhile, the US weapons manufacturer Raytheon can produce less than 50 SM-2 and fewer than 200 SM-6 missiles annually.
If these stocks are diminished, this leaves the US Navy vulnerable not only in the Red Sea and Mediterranean, where Russia is also active, but also in the Pacific Ocean, where China poses a significant threat with its hypersonic and ballistic missiles.
Fortis Analysis concludes by observing that the longer Ansarallah continues “throwing potshots” at commercial, US Navy, and allied maritime assets, “the worse the calculus gets. Supply chains win wars – and we are losing this critical domain.”
And Ansarallah has not yet tried a drone swarm attack, which would force US ships to counter dozens of incoming threats at one time.
“A swarm could tax the capabilities of a single warship but more importantly, it could mean weapons get past them to hit commercial ships,” Salvatore Mercogliano, a naval expert and professor at Campbell University in North Carolina observed.
Moreover, US warships would also face the question of how to replenish their missile inventory.
USS John Finn and USS Porter missiles capacity
“The only site to reload weapons is at Djibouti (a US base on the Horn of Africa) and that is close to the action,” he said.
Other experts suggest that the ships would either sail to the Mediterranean Sea to reload from US bases in Italy and Greece, or to the Gulf island of Bahrain which holds the Naval Support Activity and is home to US Naval Forces Central Command and United States Fifth Fleet.
The ‘great equalizer’
As a result, Abdulghani al-Iryani, a senior researcher at the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies, described the situation in Yemen as a case where technology acts as a “great equalizer.”
“Your F-15 that costs millions of dollars means nothing because I have my drone that cost a few thousand dollars that will do just as much damage,” he told the New York Times.
While the US military is successful at producing expensive, technologically complex weapons systems that provide excellent profits for the arms industry, such as the F-15 warplanes, it is not capable of producing enough of the weapons needed to actually fight and win real wars on the other side of the world, where supply chains become even more critical.
In Yemen, the US is heavily challenged by the same problem it faced while fighting a proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, which after almost two years, US officials acknowledge is all but lost.
Moscow has the industrial base and the supply chains in place to produce hundreds of thousands of the low-cost, rudimentary 152mm artillery shells – two million annually – needed for success in a multi-year war of attrition fought largely in trenches. The US, quite simply, does not. Washington’s war industrial complex is currently, at best, manufacturing 288,000 shells annually and seeks to manufacture one million shells by the year 2028, still only half of the Russian manufacturing ability.
Additionally, one Russian 152mm artillery round costs $600 dollars according to western experts, whereas it costs a western country $5,000 to $6,000 to produce a comparable 155mm artillery shell.
Enter Iran
The security situation will only get worse for the US should Iran enter the conflict in support of Ansarallah, the signs of which are emerging already.
On 23 December, the US openly accused Iran of targeting commercial vessels for the first time since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, claiming a Japanese-owned chemical tanker off the coast of India was targeted by a drone “fired from Iran.”
The same day, Tehran denied the allegations but threatened the forced closure of other crucial maritime shipping lanes unless Israel halts its war crimes in Gaza.
“With the continuation of these crimes, America and its allies should expect the emergence of new resistance forces and the closure of other waterways,” Mohammad Reza Naqdi, an official in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), warned.
As a reminder, Iran possesses the largest and most diverse missile arsenal in West Asia, with thousands of ballistic and cruise missiles, some capable of striking Israel.
On 24 December, Iran announced its navy had added “fully smart” cruise missiles, including one with a 1,000km range that can change targets during travel, and another with a range of 100km which can be installed on warships.
With US and Israeli forces already under pressure from the Axis of Resistance forces in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, and now Yemen, the possible entry of Iran in the conflict is even more ominous for Washington, especially in an election year.
Genocide as a foreign policy
So, how far are President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Jake Sullivan willing to go to facilitate Israel’s ongoing carnage in the Gaza Strip?
The trio’s commitment to military aid packages for Israel and Ukraine, despite looming debt concerns, raises questions about their priorities.
The potential risk to the security of the US Navy in the Pacific Ocean may force a re-evaluation of the situation soon. This leaves the US with the option of direct military intervention in Yemen, a course of action with its own ethical and geopolitical consequences.
Recognizing the difficulty of countering Ansarallah from a defensive posture, at least some in the US national security establishment are demanding US forces go on the offensive and strike Yemen directly.
On 28 December, former vice admirals Mark I. Fox and John W. Miller argued that “deterring and degrading” Iran and Ansarallah’s ability to launch these attacks requires striking the forces in Yemen responsible for conducting them, “something no one has yet been willing to do.”
Yemen itself has just emerged from an eight-year, US-backed Saudi and UAE war that led to the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. Both Persian Gulf nations used US bombs to kill tens of thousands of Yemenis, while imposing a blockade and siege that led to hundreds of thousands of additional deaths from hunger and disease.
According to Jeffrey Bachman of the American University, Saudi Arabia and the UAE carried out a “campaign of genocide by a synchronized attack on all aspects of life in Yemen,” which was “only possible with the complicity of the United States and United Kingdom.” And yet Ansarallah emerged stronger militarily from that conflict.
If US support for two genocides in the Arab world are not enough, maybe the third will be the charm.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
Fighters from the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Hamas movement, take part in a military show in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis. (Photo by AFP)
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian says Hamas has informed the Islamic Republic that it has sufficient capabilities to continue the confrontation with Israel in the besieged Gaza Strip for months.
Amir-Abollahian said in the holy city of Qom on Thursday that more than 80 days have passed since the war on Gaza, but “the Zionist regime has not achieved anything”.
“According to Hamas commanders, only 14% of the resistance capacity has been damaged so far,” the foreign minister said.
Amir-Adbollahian said the length of Hamas tunnels today is more than the area of Gaza, and drone manufacturing workshops have not been closed for even an hour since Operation Al-Aqsa Storm on Oct. 7.
“Hamas captured valuable security and military forces of the Zionist regime on the first day of Operation Al-Aqsa Storm,” he added.
The minister touched on the rising popularity of the resistance, saying Hamas administers both Gaza and the war now.
“After the Al-Aqsa Storm, more than 70% of the people of Gaza took up arms and came to the battlefield,” he said. “After breaking the wall, all the Palestinian youth and people came to the arena and defended their country.”
“The Zionist regime”, meanwhile, “has changed its goal in Gaza several times, but has failed,” the minister said.
Amir-Abdollahian touched on all-out US support for the Israeli invasion of Gaza and Washington’s repeated messages for Iran that it did not seek an expansion of the war, asking the Islamic Republic to help prevent a spillover of the war.
“At every stage, they were given a strong response and the establishment responded to them at the official level,” he said.
“America is lying when it says it is not seeking to expand the war,” he said, adding if the Americans were not looking to expand the war, they would not be delivering their equipment and weapons to Israel day and night.
“Today, American weapons are arriving in Tel Aviv from all the bases in the region without stop. In addition, some equipment also arrives directly from America in Cyprus and goes to Tel Aviv from Cyprus.”
Also at the United Nations, a proposal was made to use Iran’s relations with the resistance for post-war plans in Gaza, “but we declared that the Palestinian people should be the decision-makers themselves”, he added.
Amir-Abollahian touched on the emergence of new powers in the world, citing resistance groups.
“The emerging powers do not mean only China’s economy. Today, resistance has become a power,” the minister said, referring to anti-US groups in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
Amir-Abdollahian reserved his highest praise for the Yemenis and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, saying they acted very bravely in this war.
“Today, Yemen has created a new legal regime in the Red Sea,” the minister said, referring to the country’s interception and targeting of Israeli ships and vessels bound for Israeli ports in Bab el-Mandeb.
“Today, the leaders of the resistance have reached a high level of foresight and understanding and have shown this in the recent war,” he added.
Amir-Abdollahian also underlined “many measures taken by the Islamic Republic of Iran in creating the Axis of Resistance to ensure security in the region”.
“Today there is no need for the Islamic Republic to take any action,” he said.
The developments are part of evolving concepts and mechanisms in the world, where the US hegemony is on the wane.
“One development is that the exercise of American hegemonic power is weakening day by day. Today, a resistance group has destroyed the army that considered itself the third military power in the world,” he said.
“Today, in the White House, the issue is raised as to why support for Israel is to such an extent that Israel’s defeat is considered America’s defeat.”
Amir-Abdollahian touched on another positive development, saying after normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia, Iran has commenced fence-mending with Egypt.
“The recent contact between the Iranian and Egyptian presidents was in this context,” he said, referring to the first phone call between Ebrahim Raeisi and Fattah el-Sisi to discuss recent developments in Gaza and the prospect of restoring diplomatic ties between their two countries.
Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:
Whether invented in northern India, eastern China or Central Asia – from Persia to Turkestan – chess is an Asian game. In chess, there always comes a time when a simple pawn is able to upset the whole chessboard, usually via a move in the back rank whose effect simply cannot be calculated.
Yes, a pawn can impose a seismic checkmate. That’s where we are, geopolitically, right now.
The cascading effects of a single move on the chessboard – Yemen’s Ansarallah stunning and carefully targeted blockade of the Red Sea – reach way beyond global shipping, supply chains, and The War of Economic Corridors. Not to mention the reduction of the much lauded US Navy force projection to irrelevancy.
Yemen’s resistance movement, Ansarallah, has made it very clear that any Israel-affiliated or Israel-destined vessel will be intercepted. While the west bristles at this, and imagines itself a target, the rest of the world fully understands that all other shipping is free to pass. Russian tankers – as well as Chinese, Iranian, and Global South ships – continue to move undisturbed across the Bab al-Mandeb (narrowest point: 33 km) and the Red Sea.
Only the Hegemon is disturbed by this challenge to its ‘rules-based order.’ It is outraged that western vessels delivering energy or goods to law-breaking Israel can be impeded, and that the supply chain has been severed and plunged into deep crisis. The pinpointed target is the Israeli economy, which is already bleeding heavily. A single Yemeni move proves to be more efficient than a torrent of imperial sanctions.
It is the tantalizing possibility of this single move turning into a paradigm shift – with no return – that is adding to the Hegemon’s apoplexy. Especially because imperial humiliation is deeply embedded in the paradigm shift.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, on the record, is now sending an unmistakeable message: Forget the Suez Canal. The way to go is the Northern Sea Route – which the Chinese, in the framework of the Russia-China strategic partnership, call the Arctic Silk Road.
Map of North-East and North-West Passage shipping routes
For the dumbfounded Europeans, the Russians have detailed three options: First, sail 15,000 miles around the Cap of Good Hope. Second, use Russia’s cheaper and faster Northern Sea Route. Third, send the cargo via Russian Railways.
Rosatom, which oversees the Northern Sea Route, has emphasized that non-ice-class ships are now able to sail throughout summer and autumn, and year-round navigation will soon be possible with the help of a fleet of nuclear icebreakers.
All that as direct consequences of the single Yemeni move. What next? Yemen entering BRICS+ at the summit in Kazan in late 2024, under the Russian presidency?
The new architecture will be framed in West Asia
The US-led Armada put together for Operation Genocide Protection, which collapsed even before birth, may have been set up to “warn Iran,” apart from giving Ansarallah a scare. Just as the Houthis, Tehran is hardly intimidated because, as West Asia analyst ace Alastair Crooke succinctly put it: “Sykes-Picot is dead.”
This is a quantum shift on the chessboard. It means West Asian powers will frame the new regional architecture from now on, not US Navy “projection.”
That carries an ineffable corollary: those eleven US aircraft carrier task forces, for all practical purposes, are essentially worthless.
Everyone across West Asia is well aware that Ansarallah’s missiles are capable of hitting Saudi and Emirati oil fields, and knocking them out of commission. So it is little wonder that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi would never accept becoming part of a US-led maritime force to challenge the Yemeni resistance.
Add to it the role of underwater drones now in the possession of Russia and Iran. Think of fifty of these aimed at a US aircraft carrier: it has no defense. While the Americans still have very advanced submarines, they cannot keep the Bab al-Mandeb and Red Sea open to western operators.
On the energy front, Moscow and Tehran don’t even need to think – at least not yet – about using the “nuclear” option or cutting off potentially at least 25 percent, and up, of the world oil supply. As one Persian Gulf analyst succinctly describes it, “that would irretrievably implode the international financial system.”
For those still determined to support the genocide in Gaza there have been warnings. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani has mentioned it explicitly. Tehran has already called for a total oil and gas embargo against nations that support Israel.
A total naval blockade of Israel, meticulously engineered, remains a distinct possibility. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander Hossein Salami said Israel may “soon face the closure of the Mediterranean Sea, the Strait of Gibraltar, and other waterways.”
Because if the Straussian neo-cons in the Beltway get really unhinged by the paradigm shift and act in desperation to “teach a lesson” to Iran, a chokepoint Hormuz-Bab al-Mandeb combo blockade might skyrocket the price of oil to at least $500 a barrel, triggering the implosion of the $618 trillion derivatives market and crashing the entire international banking system.
The paper tiger is in a jam
Mao Zedong was right after all: the US may be in fact a paper tiger. Putin, though, is way more careful, cold, and calculating. With this Russian president, it’s all about an asymmetric response, exactly when no one is expecting it.
That brings us to the prime working hypothesis perhaps capable of explaining the shadow play masking the single Ansarallah move on the chessboard.
When Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist Sy (Seymour) Hersh proved how Team Biden blew up the Nord Stream pipelines, there was no Russian response to what was, in effect, an act of terrorism against Gazprom, against Germany, against the EU, and against a bunch of European companies. Yet Yemen, now, with a simple blockade, turns global shipping upside down.
So what is more vulnerable? The physical networks of global energy supply (Pipelineistan) or the Thalassocracy, states that derive their power from naval supremacy?
Russia privileges Pipelineistan: see, for instance, the Nord Streams and Power of Siberia 1 and 2. But the US, the Hegemon, always relied on its thalassocratic power, heir to “Britannia rules the waves.”
Well, not anymore. And, surprisingly, getting there did not even entail the “nuclear” option, the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which Washington games and scaremongers like crazy.
Of course we won’t have a smoking gun. But it’s a fascinating proposition that the single Yemeni move may have been coordinated at the highest level between three BRICS members – Russia, China, and Iran, the neocon new “axis of evil” – plus other two BRICS+, energy powerhouses Saudi Arabia and the UAE. As in, “if you do it, we’ve got your back”.
None of that, of course, detracts from Yemeni purity: their defense of Palestine is a sacred duty.
Western imperialism and then turbo-capitalism have always been obsessed with gobbling up Yemen, a process that Isa Blumi, in his splendid book Destroying Yemen, described as “necessarily stripping Yemenis of their historic role as the economic, cultural, spiritual, and political engine for much of the Indian Ocean world.”
Yemen, though, is unconquerable and, true to a local proverb, “deadly” (Yemen Fataakah). As part of the Axis of Resistance, Yemen’s Ansarallah is now a key actor in a complex Eurasia-wide drama that redefines Heartland connectivity; and alongside China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the India-Iran-Russia-led International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), and Russia’s new Northern Sea Route, also includes control over strategic chokepoints around the Mediterranean Seas and the Arabian peninsula.
This is another trade connectivity paradigm entirely, smashing to bits western colonial and neocolonial control of Afro-Eurasia. So yes, BRICS+ supports Yemen, who with a single move has presented Pax Americana with The Mother of All Geopolitical Jams.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
“Yemen has said it would stop the blockade of Israel-bound ships as soon as sufficient food, water and medicine are allowed to enter Gaza. Guess that’s asking too much.” Elizabeth Murray@elizabethmurra
Yemen’s Houthi militia has shown how a small army can take on the American Empire and win. They have shown how courage, resolve and commitment to principle can act as a force-multiplier allowing a much weaker military to ‘punch above its weight’. They’ve also shown that a few well-placed missiles in key locations on the world’s most critical shipping lanes, can send tremors across the global economy and shake the “rules-based order” to its foundations. In short, the Houthis have shown that David can bring down Goliath without breaking a sweat, provided that David maintains his perch along the Bab-al-Mandab Strait.
Here’s what’s going on: The Houthis occupy an area along the narrowest part of the Red Sea that is the most important shipping corridor in the world. It is “responsible for 12% of international trade and almost one-third of global container traffic.” When the movement of ships is disrupted along this waterway, insurance premiums skyrocket, prices on retail merchandise rise, and oil prices go through the roof. That is why western powers are committed to keeping these shipping lanes open at all times whatever the cost. Here’s some background from CNN:
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels are stepping up their strikes on ships in the Red Sea, which they say are revenge against Israel for its military campaign in Gaza.
The attacks have forced some of the world’s biggest shipping and oil companies to suspend transit through one of the world’s most important maritime trade routes, which could potentially cause a shock to the global economy.
The Houthis are believed to have been armed and trained by Iran, and there are fears that their attacks could escalate Israel’s war against Hamas into a wider regional conflict. Who Are The Houthis, CNN
At present, these shipping lanes are effectively closed due to Houthis attacks on Israeli-bound vessels. This, in turn, has slowed overall traffic to a crawl. If the current situation persists or gets worse, the impact on the global economy could be catastrophic.
Today on UK Column News (1pm UK time) I will cover the latest on Yemen and how Ansarullah is already winning the war against the US-led global coalition destined for failure in the 'graveyard of invaders' which is the Yemen. pic.twitter.com/ZKXhuyiAjO
On Monday, oil giant BP became the latest company to announce it would be pausing its shipments through the Red Sea. Several shipping companies, including MSC, Maersk, Euronav and the Evergreen Group, have said they are also avoiding the Suez Canal as militants target cargo vessels.
Roughly 10 percent of all maritime oil trade goes through the Red Sea — which connects to the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal. Without access to the Red Sea route, many ships will have to take the far longer and costlier journey around Africa to reach their destinations….
It’s worth noting that the Houthis have repeatedly said that ships that are NOT bound for Israeli ports, will not be attacked. But that has not stopped all of the major shipping companies from rerouting their vessels from the Red Sea to the Cape of Good Hope. This alternate route adds weeks to the sailing time forcing carriers to raise their cargo prices and adjust their schedules. Bottom line: The action of the Houthis is going to further boost inflation in western countries pushing their economies into a sharp and protracted nosedive.
Surprisingly, the Houthis do not stand to gain anything for their efforts. In fact, they are putting themselves at great risk (of retaliation by the United States) in order to pressure Israel into stopping its relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip and to allow the starving Palestinian people access to food, water and medical supplies. The Houthis should probably be applauded for their selfless compassion and humanity, but Washington doesn’t see it that way. They don’t think see the Houthis’ action as laudable, virtuous or just. They see it as a challenge to American primacy. They see it as a threat to their regional hegemony and global leadership. They see it as interference in their Gaza policy in which Israel has been granted carte blanche to kill and maim as many Palestinians as it sees fit in order to achieve its own strategic objective, which is Greater Israel. So, what we have is an unstoppable force and an immovable object. We have two opposing points of view, and no way to resolve their differences without a direct military confrontation. That means there’s going to be trouble in the very near future.
And that is why, last Monday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced that he had assembled a ten-member maritime coalition that would patrol the waterways in the Red Sea and defend the “freedom of navigation” in that area. (Coalition members include: Britain, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles, and Spain.)
Now a reasonable person might wonder why Austin would cobble together another makeshift military coalition—whose strategic goals are far from clear—instead of first contacting the Houthi leadership to see if a deal could be worked out and a confrontation avoided. But those who have followed US foreign policy for the last 30 years, know that the US does not negotiate with people or countries it considers its inferiors. So, that option was quickly discarded. Instead, the US has decided to pursue its traditional approach to emerging crises, which involves a fair amount of incendiary rhetoric followed by a military hammer-blow. And, that appears to be the direction that things are now headed. Check out this excerpt from an article by John Helmer:
“… on Monday, in the Moscow newspaper Vedomosti, it was reported that Russian experts expect “most likely, the Americans will launch missile and bomb attacks on command centres and military depots of the Houthis, or targeted strikes by special forces may follow in order to eliminate the commanders of the movement. The operation will be roughly comparable to the actions of Western allies in Syria or Iraq.” The newspaper claimed that, according to its source, “the military forces of Saudi Arabia and the UAE may participate in the operation – their armed forces and their proxies have been waging a sluggish war against Iran’s allies in Yemen since 2015. John Helmer,Dancing With Bears
And respected publications in the western media are calling for a war with the Houthis too. This is from The World Socialist Web Site:
The US media is, meanwhile, agitating for the Biden administration to target both Yemen and Iran. In an editorial, the Wall Street Journal wrote, “The press is reporting that the Biden Administration is contemplating the use of military force in response to continuing attacks on commercial shipping by the Houthi militia in Yemen. It’s about time. The Houthi missile attacks pose the most significant threat to global shipping in decades, and they will continue unless a global coalition unites to stop them.”
The Journal continued, “The question is whether the U.S. and other Western navies are merely going to play defense and catch missiles as the Houthis set the terms of battle. Sooner or later a Houthi missile may get past U.S. naval defenses and kill American sailors. Then the White House will have little choice other than to strike back.” The Journal demands that the US escalate against Iran, declaring, “Eventually Iran’s rulers have to know that their assets—military and nuclear—are at risk if they continue to foment disorder, attack U.S. allies, and target American bases or ships.” As Gaza genocide continues, US prepares major escalation of war throughout Middle East, World Socialist Web Site
So, there’s definitely an element within the foreign policy establishment that supports the idea of a war on Yemen. We expect this ‘rush to war’ will gain momentum in the weeks ahead as more ships are diverted to Africa and hostilities continue to mount. But there’s no sign that the Houthis are going to ease up on their demands or abandon the Palestinian cause anytime soon. If anything, they appear to be more resolute than ever as is evident in this quote by Houthi Council member Muhammad al-Bukhaiti,
“Even if America succeeds in mobilizing the entire world, our operations in the Red Sea will not stop unless the massacre in Gaza stops. We will not give up the responsibility of defending the Moustazafeen (oppressed ones) of the Earth.”
There’s not a lot of wiggle-room here. The Houthis want a cessation of the violence and the distribution of humanitarian aid. And they are willing to go to war with the United States to make sure their demands are met. And no one knows better than the Houthis, what that means. During the 9 years they were at war with Saudi Arabia, Washington provided the weapons and embargo-power that led to the deaths of an estimated 377,000 people. “More than half died due to starvation and disease caused by the siege.” (Antiwar.com)
So, the Houthis know what savagery Washington is capable of. Even so, they are not backing down and not caving in. There’s going to be a ceasefire or there’s going to be a war. It’s up to Biden to decide. But if he opts for war, he should realize that it’s not going to be a cakewalk. Oh, no. There are going to be attacks on American bases, American warships and Saudi oil fields and infrastructure. Oil prices will soar, commercial shipping will grind to a standstill, and global equities will tumble. And, all the while, China and Russia will be watching from the sidelines while Uncle Sam drains his last ounce credibility and power down a black hole on the Arabian Peninsula.
This is how Houthi leader Sayyed Abdul-Malik al-Houthi summed it up:
“If the US wants to go to war with us, they must know that we are waiting. We want a direct war between Yemen and the US and Israel. We are not afraid of America and all the people of Yemen will stand against them.”
This is a war that the United States can easily avoid by simply ‘doing the right thing’ and approving a ceasefire now. That will bring a swift end to Israel’s atrocities and stop the attacks on commercial shipping at the same time. That’s a solution we can all live with.
The Yemeni Armed Forces Spokesperson highlights that the “Israel”-bound Norwegian-flagged oil tanker was only targeted after its crew had rejected all warning calls.
“In support of our Palestinian people, amid their grave plight, who are currently facing death, destruction, and siege in the Gaza Strip, and in response to the calls of the free people of Yemen and the free people of our Umma, the naval forces have executed a top-tier military operation against the Norwegian ‘Strinda’ ship,” his statement opened up.
In a televised statement, Yemeni Armed Forces Spokesperson Brigadier General Yahya Saree confirmed that the naval forces of the Yemeni Armed Forces targeted an oil tanker with a missile strike.
The Norwegian-flagged ship was loaded with oil and headed to the ports of the Israeli occupation, General Saree announced in the statement.
The Yemeni Armed Forces succeeded in the past two days in enforcing the ban they had declared earlier this week without the need for military action.
The statement emphasized that the “Strinda” oil tanker was only targeted with a missile after the crew rejected all warning calls.
“The Yemeni armed forces will not hesitate to target any ship that violates the directions in previous statements,” he stressed.
Prior to the Yemeni statement, the US CENTCOM stated that “the Motor Tanker STRINDA was attacked by what is assessed to have been an Anti-Ship Cruise Missile (ASCM)” launched from an area of Yemen controlled by Ansar Allah while passing through Bab al-Mandab Strait.
CENTCOM Statement on missile attack in the Bab-el-Mandeb At around 4 p.m. EST on December 11, the Motor Tanker STRINDA was attacked by what is assessed to have been an Anti-Ship Cruise Missile (ASCM) launched from a Houthi controlled area of Yemen while passing through the… pic.twitter.com/OJDoubAU2D
Earlier today, the British Maritime Trade Operations Department said a fire broke out on board a ship near the Bab al-Mandab Strait, off the Yemeni coast.
The administration stated on its website that the incident took place 15 miles west of the port of Mokha in Yemen and is currently under investigation. Additionally, it was reported that all crew members of the affected ship were safe.
This statement coincided with the announcement made by the official spokesperson for the Yemeni Armed Forces, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, who posted on the X platform, “An important statement from the Yemeni Armed Forces in the coming hours.”
On Sunday, the Yemeni Armed Forces announced the introduction of a new actionable decision in support of Gaza, which will see the prohibition of all ships bound to the occupation entity, regardless of their nationality, from passing through the Arabian and Red seas until food and medicine sufficient to the needs of the population enter the besieged Strip.
In a statement, Yemeni Armed Forces Spokesperson Brigadier General Yahya Saree declared that this prohibition is “effective immediately,” noting that Sanaa, “out of its commitment to the safety of maritime navigation, warns all ships and companies against dealing with Israeli ports.”
“The Yemeni Armed Forces emphasize their full commitment to the continuity of global trade movement through the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea for all ships and all countries, except those ships associated with Israel or those that will transport goods” to the occupation entity.
In an earlier statement, on November 19, the Yemeni Armed Forces Spokesperson, Yahya Saree, announced the Forces’ intention to target any ships owned or operated by Israeli companies or bearing the Israeli flag. This statement, made on the group’s Telegram channel, also included a call for all nations to withdraw their citizens employed in the crews of any such ships.
This comes alongside other attacks claimed by Yemen against Israeli targets, including the launch of long-range cruise missiles and attack drones on several occasions, as well as ballistic missiles at “Eilat” located in the southernmost region of occupied Palestine.
The Yemeni armed forces present Israel with a complex dilemma
Dangerous: Yemen is on the verge of hot water and the specter of war is returning.. The Transitional Council is flirting with Israel.. and an international coalition is forming, and Egypt is on the line!
على إيقاع واحد تبدو جبهات المواجهة التي يخوض عبرها محور– المقاومة بقيادة واضحة للمقاومة في غزة، مواجهته المدروسة مع كيان الاحتلال ومن خلفه القرار الأميركيّ بالردع لمنع أي مؤازرة لغزة شعباً ومقاومة. وقد ظهر خلال يومين ماضيين، وبالتزامن مع وصول جيش الاحتلال إلى شوارع مدينة خان يونس، حيث يبدو أن فصائل المقاومة الفلسطينية، وخصوصاً قوات القسام وسرايا القدس، قد أعدّت ما يلزم لمواجهة شاملة نوعيّة وكميّة، ظهرت ساعة الصفر معلنة للانتقال إلى المواجهة المفتوحة في كل مناطق الاشتباك في غزة، شمالاً وجنوباً، مدناً ومخيّمات، وكأن قوات احتياطيّة كانت موجودة تنتظر لحظة الدخول إلى خان يونس بصفتها كلمة السر للهجوم الشامل، على طريقة ما جرى في غلاف غزة. واجه جيش الاحتلال عواصف ناريّة من كل حدب وصوب، تطويق وإطباق، كمائن وقذائف هاون، مشاة يهاجمون الدبابات ببسالة نادرة وحرفيّة عالية، فتحترق عشرات الآليات ويُصاب مئات الجنود والضباط.
– التوقيت لغزة، لكن الإعلان لليمن، فلم تكَدْ غزة تفتح نيرانها في افتتاح المرحلة الجديدة، حتى خرج الناطق العسكريّ اليمنيّ يعلن أن مضيق باب المندب مقفل أمام عبور أي سفن متّجهة الى موانئ كيان الاحتلال، وفق معادلة طالما غزة تحت الحصار فإن الكيان سوف يوضع تحت الحصار. وبدأ اليمن تنفيذ القرار فوراً، عبر تسيير دوريات من الزوارق للتفتيش عن السفن التي يشكّ بها وفقاً للوائح المتداولة على مواقع التجارة الدوليّة لوجهة السفن التجارية وحمولتها. وتم أمس، إيقاف سفينتين وإعادتهما من المضيق إلى المحيط الهندي، والقرار اليمنيّ تحدٍّ واضح ومباشر للاستراتيجية الأميركية حول دور قواتها العسكرية في البحر الأحمر طوال خمسين عاماً. ولسان حال اليمنيين، استخدمت أميركا الفيتو في مجلس الأمن الدوليّ لمنع وقف النار على غزة، ونحن نستخدم الفيتو في البحر الأحمر لمنع إمداد كيان الاحتلال بالنفط والمواد الاستهلاكيّة ومنع التجارة معه، فماذا سيفعل الأميركي، هل يذهب الى الحرب فيشتعل البحر الأحمر كلياً، أم يرتضي قواعد الاشتباك التي فرضها أنصار الله؟
– بالتوازي كانت القواعد الأميركيّة في سورية والعراق تتلقى أكبر عدد من الهجمات وأكثرها قسوة، عبر الصواريخ الموجّهة والطائرات المسيرة الانتحارية، وواشنطن أيضاً بين خيارَيْ الردّ الذي يجسّد الردع، كما ورد في البيانات الأميركية أول أيام حرب غزة. وهذا سوف يستدرج الحرب إلى البحر الأبيض المتوسط حيث تربض المدمّرات والحاملات الأميركيّة، ويصبح البحر الأبيض المتوسط ساحة حرب لا تجارة وتحاصر أوروبا بين بحرين مشتعلين بلا موارد طاقة، ولا تجارة مع الخليج أو مع الهند والصين، والتراجع الأميركي يعني إضافة لسقوط الردع والمهابة، أن الزمن بات ينفد بسرعة من طريق الحرب الإسرائيلية الأميركية على غزة، وقادة الكيان يقولون إن لم تفعل أميركا ما يجب مع اليمن سوف نضطر نحن لفعل ذلك، فهل يفعلون ويشعلون البحر الأحمر؟
– تبقى الجبهة العقدة بالنسبة لأميركا و»إسرائيل»، هي جبهة لبنان التي ادّخرت مقدراتها، سواء بالقدرة النارية أو بالقدرة البشرية، للمرحلة الفاصلة، وقد ارتفعت وتيرتها إلى الحدّ الذي لم يعد قادة كيان الاحتلال من سياسيين وعسكريين يملكون جواباً يقولونه لمئة ألف مستوطن هجروا من مستوطناتهم، وقد تحوّل شمال فلسطين المحتلة الى جبهة حرب، وضربت التحصينات والمواقع وأُحرقت الدبابات وقُتل الجنود أو جُرحوا، والمساعي الدبلوماسية التي تحدّث عن انتظار نتائجها وزير حرب الكيان يوآف غالنت انتهت بلا جدوى، وقد سمع الموفدون جواباً واحداً، تتوقف الحرب على غزة ثم نصغي ونجيب، فماذا سيفعل الإسرائيلي، هو يختنق عسكرياً في غزة، ويختنق سياسياً في العالم، كما يقول الشارع الذاهب إلى الإضراب الشامل اليوم والضاغط على حكومات اضطرت أن تؤيّد دعوة وقف إطلاق النار في مجلس الأمن، حتى وجدت واشنطن نفسها وحيدة تستخدم الفيتو وتتساءل إلى متى سوف تستطيع ذلك، وهي أيضاً تخسر في شارعها؟
– الوقت ينفد حتى داخل الكيان، ولم تعد للحرب خريطة طريق للنصر، وعائلات الأسرى تتحوّل شارعاً فاعلاً يستقطب المعارضين للحكومة والمعارضين للحرب على السواء، فهل يشكل توسيع الحرب نحو اليمن أو نحو لبنان، أو كليهما، طريقاً للخروج منها عبر توسيعها، بالنسبة لبنيامين نتنياهو؟
A picture taken during an organized tour by the Yemeni Ansar Allah movement on November 22, 2023, shows the Galaxy Leader cargo ship, seized by the Yemeni Navy, docked in a port on the Red Sea in the Yemeni province of Hodeida, with Palestinian and Yemeni flags installed on it. (AFP)
Israeli media say “Israel” is framing the Yemeni threats in the Red and Arabian Seas as detrimental to global trade and shipping routes.
Israeli media outlets commented Saturday on Yemen’s recent decision to prohibit any ship from reaching Israeli ports via the Arabian and Red seas if Gaza’s needs for food and medicine are not met.
Tamir Hayman, the former head of the Israeli occupation’s military intelligence division, said that the Yemeni threat is a problem for “Israel’s national security” and poses a very serious strategic threat to “Israel’s maritime freedom,” pointing out that Yemeni threats would impact Israelis in terms of higher living costs.
In a related context, the military commentator for the Israeli Channel 12, Nir Dvori, mentioned that “Israel” is attempting to convey a message to the United States that the Yemeni threats are not just “Israel’s” problem but a global issue, requiring not only Israeli intervention but global attention.
Dvori emphasized that “Israel” is framing the Yemeni threats as detrimental to global trade and shipping routes, stressing the importance of addressing this matter globally rather than “Israel” tackling it alone.
On his part, Chen Herzog, the Chief Economist at BDO Consulting, warned that the Yemeni threat to maritime shipping to “Israel” could lead to a hefty economic price in living costs and supply chains, highlighting that “Israel’s” annual import volume of goods amounts to around 400 billion shekels, with 70% arriving by sea.
Herzog explained that the Yemeni threat impacts “Israel” at three levels: firstly, an increase in insurance costs for maritime transport to “Israel” due to heightened risks. Secondly, the potential shift in shipping routes from the East to “Israel” may require vessels to circumnavigate Africa instead of passing through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Red Sea. This would extend sailing time by 30 days, resulting in increased maritime shipping costs. The third level is manifested in foreign shipping companies entirely avoiding Israeli ports to mitigate risks or due to insurance company restrictions.
The Yemeni Armed Forces announced on Sunday the introduction of a new actionable decision in support of Gaza, which will see the prohibition of all ships bound to the occupation entity, regardless of their nationality, from passing through the Arabian and Red Seas until food and medicine sufficient to the needs of the population enter the besieged Strip.
In a statement, Yemeni Armed Forces Spokesperson Brigadier General Yahya Saree declared that this prohibition is “effective immediately,” noting that Sanaa, “out of its commitment to the safety of maritime navigation, warns all ships and companies against dealing with Israeli ports.”
“The Yemeni Armed Forces emphasize their full commitment to the continuity of global trade movement through the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea for all ships and all countries, except those ships associated with Israel or those that will transport goods” to the occupation entity.
It is worth noting that the spokesperson did not void the earlier equation, which constitutes that the Yemeni army will continue targeting Israeli ships in the Red Sea until the war on Gaza stops.
Implementing previous warnings, the Yemeni Armed Forces captured last month the Israeli Galaxy Leader vessel in the Red Sea via a naval operation landing on its deck, before leading it to the sea off the coast of Hodeidah.
The army also successfully targeted two Israeli cargo ships earlier this month, using a drone and missiles, while forcing several shipping vessels to reroute or entirely change course away from the Red Sea, subsequently increasing delivery periods, costs, and insurance rates.
By targeting Israel and Israeli-owned vessels, the Yemeni resistance threatens Israel’s trade-based economy and exacts an international cost for Tel Aviv’s devastating war on Gaza.
Despite facing its own war-stricken challenges and humanitarian crises, Yemen has consistently demonstrated unwavering support and solidarity with Palestine. In the Arab world, the poorest state in West Asia stands unparalleled in organizing massive pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
However, recent events mark a historic shift, as the Ansarallah-led government, for the first time, has directly engaged in strikes against Israel that originate from the territory of “Happy Yemen.”
The extensive range covered by Yemen’s missiles and drones in their journey toward Israel – exceeding two thousand kilometers – serves as a resounding rebuttal to US attempts to contain the conflict from becoming a wider West Asian one.
If there were any doubts about Sanaa’s prominent role within the Axis of Resistance previously, they are now unequivocally laid to rest.
Ansarallah answers back
The Yemeni escalation began with an open declaration, transitioning from the stage of mere threats against Washington’s military support in the war on Gaza. It progressed to the launching of missiles and drones towards the city of Um al-Rashrash (Eilat), followed by a strategic shift to naval operations against Israeli-linked vessels, as announced by the Yemeni Armed Forces on 19 November. Notably, this escalation culminated in what is believed to be the first attempt to target a US military ship with missiles.
Since Ansarallah leader Abdulmalik al-Houthi’s warning to the US, Yemen’s resistance activities have intensified, spanning from Um al-Rashrash to the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandab Strait, and the Gulf of Aden.
This new dimension to the Resistance Axis’ reach creates regional confusion for the US military, which has unabashedly sided with Israel’s assault on Gaza, and works to conceal the genocide employed against 2.3 million civilians in the besieged Strip.
The repercussions have reverberated in US political and security recalculations across the entire region. Perhaps most significantly, these actions have compelled the occupation state to reassess its economic losses and the costs of prolonged war.
The latest economic fallout is a notable incident involving the container ship Zim Europe, operated by the Israeli shipping company Zim. Concerned over Yemeni threats against Israel-linked ships, the vessel was forced to alter its course, deviating from its planned route through the Suez-Bab al-Mandab Canal.
Instead, the Zim Europe embarked on a sea journey 56 percent longer, circumnavigating Africa through the Atlantic Ocean and Cape of Good Hope, reflecting the economic and logistical hurdle now faced by Israeli shipping companies.
At the same time, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) reported that “two ballistic missiles were fired from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen toward the general location of USS Mason (DDG-87) and M/V Central Park.”
This incident occurred in the Gulf of Aden as part of what was described as a rescue mission for the cargo ship Central Park, operated by Zodiac Marine and owned by Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer.
But what does this mean from a broader perspective?
Global trade disruption
First, Ansarallah in Yemen has positioned itself outside the jurisdiction of any temporary truces declared in Gaza.
Second, if the reports from CENTCOM are accurate, this incident marks the first notable clash between Yemeni forces in Sanaa and US forces. This confrontation gained momentum as the Israeli aggression on Gaza intensified, with Ansarallah claiming the downing of an American MQ-9 Reaper drone in Yemeni territorial waters on 8 November.
Third, the cost of the war is dramatically escalating for Israel. An optimistic calculation in early November was that a year-long war fought solely on the Gaza front would cost Tel Aviv over $50 billion, or 10 percent of Israel’s GDP. That’s an unrealistic figure given that Israel is already engaged on its northern border with the Lebanese resistance, Hezbollah, and has significantly widened its military scope in the occupied West Bank.
Moreover, it does not consider the extraordinary costs associated with disrupting Israeli trade. The occupation state imports and exports nearly 99 percent of goods via waterways and shipping. These imports include much of the country’s food supply, which Israel does not, and cannot, produce.
Today, according to Foreign Policy magazine, “only Russia’s and Ukraine’s Black Sea ports incur significantly higher war risk premiums than Ashdod [Israeli port] does.” And if Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah escalates, that will take out Haifa’s port too, which the Lebanese resistance targeted in the 2006 war.
All of this has vast international repercussions too. The disruption of commercial traffic between the Suez Canal and Bab al-Mandab doesn’t only apply pressure on Israel: approximately 12 percent of global trade annually, including about 21,000 ships and 6 million barrels of oil per day (9 percent of the total transported by sea), relies on this route.
Bab al-Mandab is a vital link in the trade between East and West Asia and Europe. Um al-Rashrash, strategically located in the Red Sea, plays a key role in this trade movement, connecting Israel to East Asian markets.
The role of this port was strengthened after the signing of the US-brokered normalization agreement with the UAE and Bahrain three years ago, where it was agreed to transport shipments of UAE crude oil to Um al-Rashrash, to be transported through the Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline – that is, from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.
The recent missile and drone strikes on Um al-Rashrash undermine not just Israel’s security but its economic ambitions, including vital tourism traffic that contributes substantially to its revenue. Tel Aviv’s obscure stance on the “Yemeni front” may stem from a desire to avoid security and political embarrassment resulting from this distant support.
The immediate impact of the Yemeni attack on Israel’s maritime trade is evident in the rapid rise in transportation costs. Israeli ships may need to avoid the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab altogether, opting for longer routes around Africa or resorting to higher-cost air transport. The fees of insurance companies, especially for Israeli ships or those transporting goods intended for the occupation state, will likely continue to increase.
Israel’s imminent implosion
These economic challenges take on new dimensions, considering the Israeli Ministry of Finance’s estimate that the cost of the war exceeds $270 million per day, with Israel expected to bear a significant portion, in addition to US taxpayers.
Pre-existing Israeli political and social unrest, coupled with a decline in foreign reserves, forced borrowing, and economic contraction, could substantially damage its economy. The World Bank’s estimation that 34.6 percent of Israel’s GDP depends on trade in goods is a case in point. Tens of billions of dollars in Israeli-Asian trade are also at risk due to the regional disruptions in the Red Sea.
All of this uncertainty adds to other concerns, such as a retreat of investors from risk, a sharp decline (by 70 percent) in the volume of invested capital since last October, and the mass “exodus” of settlers to their countries of origin.
Sanaa’s participation in the Palestinian resistance’s Al-Aqsa Flood operation may also impact the ongoing US-backed, Saudi-led war in Yemen, particularly given unofficial reports of Saudi Arabia intercepting missiles launched toward Israel.
Any hasty US attempt to intervene to protect Israel and confront Ansarallah’s decisions may lead to an increase in aggression against Yemen. This raises questions about the vulnerability of coalition partners, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, to Yemeni missiles once again.
It would also prove how the US and its regional allies are a destabilizing force in West Asia – a force that the Axis of Resistance is effectively countering in the political, military, and economic realms.
Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement held a massive military parade on 21 September, marking the anniversary of the 2014 revolution, which saw the group assume control over the capital Sanaa.
The parade comes just days after an Ansarallah delegation visited Saudi Arabia for the latest round of peace talks with the kingdom, which were recently described as being in their final stages.
During the parade, Yemen’s Armed Forces – who are allied to and aligned with the Ansarallah movement – revealed for the first time a number of new weapons, including ballistic missiles, naval vessels, and armored vehicles, including the Sejjil sea missile, a winged cruise missile with a range of 180 kilometers.
Other weapons revealed for the first time included the Bariq 1 and 2 anti-aircraft missiles, with a 50 and 70 kilometer range each; others were the Badr 4, Quds 4, Aqil missile, Toofan missile, and Mutee’ missile. The Toofan and Mutee’ are ballistic missiles.
Yemen’s Ansarallah throws massive military parade on the ninth anniversary of the 2014 revolution, and reveals new weaponry including ballistic missiles, naval vessels and armored vehicles – all Made in Yemen. pic.twitter.com/NpvNIOVYgO
A variety of armored boats and naval mines were also displayed, alongside a fighter jet, which soared through the skies as the parade went on.
Throughout the ceremony, Defense Minister of Sanaa’s Ansarallah-led government, Major General Mohammad Nasser al-Atifi, said via loudspeaker: “There is no peace with a full end to the aggression, a lifting of the siege, and departure of foreign forces. There is no peace without fulfilling the demands of the Yemenis.”
“We will not accept invaders, occupiers’ presence on our lands … They will face Yemen’s anger,” Atifi said, adding that Yemen is ready to “engage in battle … if the Saudi aggression does not adhere to the requirements of an honorable peace and fulfills the legitimate, just, and rightful aspirations of Yemenis.”
Two days ago, the Ansarallah delegation visiting Riyadh met with Saudi Arabia’s Defense Minister Khaled bin Salman.
According to Arabic media reports, a recent meeting was also held in Muscat between the delegation and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), during which the crown prince provided “guarantees to Sanaa regarding all points of disagreement, including the American position opposing peace.”
Omani-mediated peace talks, which began in April this year, collapsed not long after over what Ansarallah referred to as US interference. According to the movement, Washington was trying to obstruct the payment of the salaries of public servants in Yemen, one of the Sanaa government’s leading demands for peace.
The main terms include a full lifting of the blockade on Hodeidah Port and Sanaa International Airport.
Tawfiq al-Humairi, information ministry advisor in the Sanaa government, said on 17 September that “Riyadh has accepted the terms that it had refused in the previous period.”
However, US, British, French, and Emirati military forces continue to illegally occupy the country. Ansarallah has repeatedly threatened to confront these forces.
The UAE specifically has maintained an illegal presence over Yemen’s oilfields, ports, islands, and waterways.
During the parade, the defense minister vowed that “our islands, seas, and the Bab al-Mandab Strait will be under Yemen’s decision.”
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A majestic military parade by the Yemeni army and armed forces on the occasion of the ninth anniversary of the glorious September 21 revolution.
The Yemeni Armed Forces reveal for the first time the Badr 4, Quds 4, Aqeel, Tufan, Mayon, Tankeel and Mutee’ missiles.
The Israeli occupation has several reasons to rush to mediate a ceasefire between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support forces, the most important of which is establishing its presence in yet another African country bordering the strategic Red Sea.
‘Israel’ eager to mediate ceasefire in Sudan: What are the reasons?
A few days ago, three Israeli occupation Foreign Ministry officials told Axios that “Israel” has offered to host both parties involved in the conflict in Sudan in an effort to reach a cease-fire agreement.
The proposal was handed to Army Chief General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) head General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, as Israeli occupation Foreign Minister Eli Cohen and director general of the Israeli occupation’s Foreign Ministry Ronen Levy remained in direct contact with both Sudanese generals.
Axios reported that "Israel" has been in contact with generals of both the #Sudanese Army Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), urging them to stop their fighting as the ongoing clashes put the normalization deal between #Sudan and the occupation at risk. pic.twitter.com/BFoLIcdo83
According to Cohen and Levy, both Sudanese generals gave the impression that they were considering the proposal in a positive light, adding that US President Joe Biden’s administration was consulted and informed.
“Since the fighting started in Sudan, Israel has been working in different channels in order to reach a ceasefire. The progress we have made with the two parties is very encouraging. If there will be a way that Israel could help in stopping the war and the violence in Sudan we will be very happy to do it,” Cohen told Axios in a statement.
#Sudan is plunged into complete chaos one day after clashes broke out between the #Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and a paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). pic.twitter.com/C4zxUOWKEJ
Normalization with ‘Israel’ jeopardized by Sudan fighting: Axios
Another report by Axios revealed that the Israeli occupation fears that the ongoing clashes will hinder the formation of a prospected Israeli-allied civilian government, which would jeopardize the normalization agreement between Sudan and the Israeli occupation.
According to the report, “Israel” has built strong relationships with both Al-Burhan and Dagalo. Before clashes ensued, Israeli officials said they were actively following up on the process of appointing a civilian-led government in Sudan.
During his visit to Khartoum in February, Cohen urged Al-Burhan to proceed with restoring civilian rule, emphasizing that it will be challenging to secure a peace agreement without it, Axios mentioned.
The news website cited Israeli sources as saying that the Israeli occupation Foreign Ministry has been in contact with Al-Burhan over the normalization process, while Dagalo and Mossad have met and discussed “security” and “counterterrorism issues”.
Israeli officials were certain of an agreement to appoint a civilian government in the upcoming days, Axios indicated. However, what transpired was fierce fighting that spread over multiple cities in the country.
The White House has also pushed Israelis to mediate a ceasefire deal between the fighting generals, the report revealed.
But why is “Israel” in a rush to complete the normalization process with Sudan?
Flashback
It all started in 2016 when the Israeli occupation urged the US to allow it to infiltrate into Sudan after the North African country severed diplomatic ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Following Saudi Arabia’s lead, Sudan cut diplomatic ties with Iran after the storming of the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Tehran and the consulate building in the city of Mashhad.
In August 2017, then-Sudanese Minister for Investment, Mubarak Fadel Al-Mahdi, spoke for the first time about normalization with the Israeli occupation during an interview with the Sudania24 TV station.
And when General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan came to power after the resignation of Omar Al-Bashir, he met in February 2020 with Israeli occupation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Uganda.
Consequently, Khartoum was removed from the US blacklist in December 2020 after 27 years of imposed sanctions.
In January 2021, Sudan formally agreed to normalize relations with “Israel” in a quid pro quo for the United States to remove it from its list of so-called “state sponsors of terrorism”, but ties were never formalized. In April of that year, the North African nation approved a bill abolishing a 1958 boycott of the Israeli occupation.
Finally, Sudan and “Israel” said in February that they agreed to move towards normalizing relations during the first official visit of Israeli occupation Foreign Minister Eli Cohen to Khartoum.
Sudan; a route to transfer arms to Palestinian Resistance
One of the several reasons that the Israeli occupation is racing against time to complete the normalization process with Sudan is to make sure that the North African country does not again become a route to transfer arms to the Palestinian Resistance in the Gaza Strip.
Before severing ties with Iran, Al-Bashir’s administration reportedly supported the Hamas movement politically and allowed it to open an office in Sudan. The Israeli occupation had previously accused Sudan of allowing the passage of arms from several countries to Gaza via its territory.
However, with the regime change in Egypt and the rise of General Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi as President, the latter ordered the destruction of tunnels between his country and Gaza, through which the Palestinian Resistance reportedly used to receive arms.
In March 2009, the Israeli occupation even targeted a 17-truck convoy in eastern Sudan that reportedly carried weapons to Gaza, and also targeted an arms factory in Khartoum in October 2012.
In March 2014, the Israeli occupation’s navy said it seized a ship loaded with weapons in the Red Sea between Sudan and Eritrea that was allegedly en route from Iran to Gaza.
To further dive into the reason for “Israel’s” eagerness to mediate a ceasefire in Sudan and consequently complete a peace agreement with the North African nation, one should tackle the history of relations between the two sides.
History of Sudanese-Israeli relations
In his book “Israel” And Relations With The Islamic World, Jihad Odeh said that “Israel’s” ties with Sudan began before the latter gained its independence from British occupation in 1956, when an Israeli trade mission comprising 50 people settled in Khartoum in 1951 to buy Sudanese products and goods and send them to “Israel” via Cape Town, South Africa, to avoid anti-smuggling measures taken by the Egyptian authorities in the Suez Port and Port Said.
The book mentioned that Israeli planes often landed at Khartoum airport to refuel and continue their flights, which prompted the Secretary-General of the Arab League at the time to send a memorandum to the British government in February 1951 to inquire about the matter.
Britain, which was ruling Sudan in partnership with Egypt, replied that Israeli planes had the right to use Khartoum Airport under the pretext that Britain and Sudan are not at war with “Israel.”
It was during the era of Abdullah Khalil’s government that the first Israeli intelligence envoy arrived in Sudan, with the consent of the Sudanese government, Odeh revealed in his book.
And as a result of contacts that began in 1954 between Sudanese politicians and “Israel”, a Sudanese figure accompanied by a Sudanese journalist met in a London hotel with a young diplomat working in the Israeli occupation’s embassy in Britain named Mordechai Gazit.
The author said that Sadiq Al-Mahdi, the head of the Umma Party, was in contact with Mossad in 1954, and met along with Mohammad Ahmad Omar, editor-in-Chief of the Nile Newspaper and spokesperson for the Umma Party, with Gazit.
According to Odeh, the goal of Sudan at that time was to seek the help of “Israel” to win Jewish public opinion in the West to obtain independence, while Gazit wanted to establish commercial relations Between Sudan and “Israel” to reduce the intensity of Arab isolation.
Contacts and meetings between Israeli and Sudanese politicians continued after the latter’s independence in 1956, when then-Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir met with then-head of the Sudanese government Abdullah Khalil in the summer of 1957.
In those discussions between Meir and Khalil, it was agreed to send Israeli agricultural experts and civilian and military advisors to Sudan. It was also agreed that Sudan would allow EL AL planes to land and refuel on their way to South Africa, and that the Mossad would be allowed to build a station in the North African country.
Al Haya newspaper noted that the Mossad was able to establish its station again in Khartoum in 1983 during the era of then-Sudanese President Jaafar Nimeiry after the latter met with Menachem Begin’s Security Minister, Ariel Sharon.
Nimeiry revealed that he began his contacts with “Israel” in 1965 when he was an officer participating in a course on cooperation between Sudan and the US, where he established contacts with Israeli personalities who later visited Sudan in unannounced secret visits, Odeh mentioned in his book. However, when he took power in May 1969, Nimeiry followed Egypt’s footsteps against the Israeli occupation.
Nevertheless, Israeli ties with Nimeiry’s regime re-resurfaced after the Camp David Accords, which he supported, leading Mossad to rebuild its mission in Sudan.
Why Africa and Sudan?
In his book, The Israeli Foreign Policy Toward Africa: The Sudan Case, Amer Khalil Ahmed Amer pointed out that “Israel” has adopted an approach that relies on closer relations with countries surrounding Arab states, and this is evident in the strong relations with these countries at all levels, especially in the field of military and security cooperation, hidden under the cover of trade and economic relations.
In parallel with the expertise that the Israeli occupation provides to these countries, Amer continued, it has gained a foothold in military bases that oversee Arab countries, which represents a clear threat to Arab national security in general.
The occupation can threaten Arab water security and navigation in the Red Sea, due to the advanced position that it gained from establishing strong relations with Eritrea, the author pointed out.
Amer noted that the attempt to control the Red Sea is one of the most important strategic goals of “Israel” in the African continent, adding that the occupation began to establish a presence on the Red Sea in order to use it to achieve its military, economic, and political interests.
To achieve this goal, “Israel” strengthened its relations with Ethiopia in the late sixties and Eritrea after its independence from Ethiopia in 1991; it also built bases in Ethiopia after Moshe Dayan’s visit in 1965.
In addition to its military bases on the Eritrean islands, especially near Bab Al-Mandab, “Israel” built two military bases in Ethiopia near the border between Eritrea and Sudan.
According to Amer, this expansion in the Red Sea region gave “Israel” a strategic depth in Bab Al-Mandab to monitor any Arab military activity in the region.
It is noteworthy that “Israel” has military and intelligence bases for espionage and monitoring on a number of Eritrean islands, including Dahlak, Haleb, and Marsa Fatma, which are located at the southern entrance to the Red Sea, in addition to Zubair Island, which is only 22 km from Yemen, and houses a communications network and radar equipment.
The Israeli presence on these islands also includes special forces, paratrooper units, and airborne forces equipped with modern helicopters and Dolphin-class submarines. Through these bases, “Israel” threatens Yemen’s national security, where it can monitor it and spy on it smoothly, Amer argued.
During his visit to “Israel” in 1996, then-Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki signed an agreement to enhance security and military cooperation that included, in one of its clauses, an Israeli pledge to support Eritrea to confront any attempts by any force to control its strategic islands located at the southern entrance to the Red Sea, and to allow a limited military presence in these islands.
Sudan; a power to the Arab world
According to Amer, Israeli estimates since the beginning of Sudan’s independence indicated that this country should not be allowed to become a force added to the power of the Arab world, because if invested in stable conditions, its resources will make it a threatening force.
During the 1967 War, Sudan became a base for training and sheltering the Egyptian Air Force and ground forces. It also sent its forces to the Canal region during the War of Attrition between 1968 and 1970, as well as during the 1973 October War.
It is noteworthy that following the 1967 Six Day War, Khartoum hosted the Arab League summit held from 29 August to 1 September 1967. There, Arab leaders declared the three no’s: “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel.”
The transformation of Yemen’s strategically-located Socotra Island into an Emirati-Israeli military intelligence hub has raised concerns for the Ansarallah movement and its allies, significantly increasing the geopolitical stakes of the Yemen war.
Located off the southern coast of Yemen in the Arabian Sea, the Socotra archipelago has become a focal point of regional and international interest because of its strategic proximity to one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
On 21 June, 2020, the Yemeni island was militarily occupied by Saudi Arabia’s Emirati coalition partner, which has aggressively pursued a policy of establishing and controlling ports throughout West Asia and the Horn of Africa since 1999.
The archipelago consists of four large islands: Socotra (3,796km2), Abd al-Kuri (130.2km2), Samhah (39.6km2), and Darsah (7.5km2), as well as three small islets.
Socotra, the biggest of the islands, lies 350 km south of the Arabian Peninsula and 95 km from Somalia. It is surrounded by the Gulf of Aden, the Indian Ocean, and the Arabian Sea, and faces the Horn of Africa from the west. Around 20,000 shipping vessels pass around Socotra each year, including 9 percent of the world’s annual global petroleum supply.
The War on Yemen
The assault on Yemen was launched on 26 March, 2015, in an announcement by Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir from Washington DC, in which he stated that a coalition of ten countries, led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, would take military action to reinstate the government of Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.
Hadi had been ousted in popular protests in 2014, after losing the capital city, Sanaa, to the joint forces of the Ansarallah movement and their allies in the country’s armed forces. Based in northern Yemen, the Ansarallah movement had been advocating for fair representation in the government for a long time.
With US-backing, Saudi Arabia launched “Operation Decisive Storm,” and the air strikes began. Initially expected to last only a few weeks or months – and according to MbS himself, just “a few days” – the Yemeni war has now entered its eighth year and taken on a markedly different shape than the coalition initially contended.
Two years into the war, the Emiratis began pursuing their own hidden agenda of establishing a “self-styled maritime empire” in Yemen, which veered sharply from Riyadh’s objectives. To achieve this goal, Abu Dhabi sought to control the country’s southern coastline and its ports and enlisted the help of a local Yemeni proxy called the Southern Movement.
The Southern Movement was formed by secessionist tribes and groups seeking to divide Yemen along the old partition lines of 1967–1990. However, the movement had to be restructured to match the UAE’s aspirations, and in 2017 it was transformed into the Southern Transitional Council (STC).
Map of the Emirati-controlled areas and ports in southern Yemen
The significance of Socotra
Socotra Island falls under the territorial jurisdiction of the exiled Hadi government, which to this day – despite his physical absence and the replacement of the “presidency” with an 8-member, Saudi-sponsored Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) – remains Yemen’s internationally-recognized government.
However, on 30 April, 2018, the UAE deployed hundreds of troops with artillery and armored vehicles on the island, which is located 350 km away from the mainland conflict, without any prior coordination with Yemeni authorities.
The Riyadh-backed Yemeni government condemned the Emirati aggression, backed by local islanders protesting against the occupation of their territory. The Saudis were forced to intervene by sending troops and training locals to deter the UAE from seizing the island.
But later that year, UAE General Khalfan al-Mazrouei arrived on Socotra Island and has since been considered its de facto ruler. Under his leadership, the Emiratis gained the loyalty of local tribes by using bribery under the guise of “humanitarian aid.” They offered Socotra residents UAE passports and promised them an improved quality of life.
UAE General Khalfan al-Mazrouei arrives in Socotra, 2018
The STC seizes Socotra
On the morning of 21 June, 2020, the UAE-backed STC separatists forcibly seized control of Socotra and ousted the Saudi-backed, pro-Hadi forces.
The UAE had been planning and preparing for this operation for two years, using its Yemeni proxies to gain full control over the Socotra archipelago. The Emirati flag was raised across the territory, and UAE telecommunication companies replaced Yemeni ones. Consequently, all phone calls from Socotra now register Emirati phone networks.
UAE-Israel normalization
Three months after the seizure of Socotra, the highly-controversial Abraham Accords was signed in Washington DC between Israel and the UAE, along with Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. On the Arab side, the normalization thrust was led by Abu Dhabi, which quickly moved to expand its diplomatic, military, and economic ties with Tel Aviv.
Shortly after the signing of the Abraham Accords, reports and images of Israeli “tourists” visiting Socotra began to emerge. According to an Al-Mayadeenreport, however, the Israeli visitors were not tourists, but rather, military experts.
An Israeli “tourist” in Socotra Island; picture via Twitter
Abd al-Kuri Island
In February 2023, Ansarallah released a statement condemning the UAE’s eviction of residents from Abd al-Kuri, the archipelago’s second-largest island. The resistance movement accused Abu Dhabi of carrying out a long-planned operation to transform Socotra into an Israeli-Emirati military and intelligence hub.
These actions by the UAE are not isolated incidents. In another 2022 episode, Ansarallah accused Abu Dhabi of transferring fishermen from the small island of Perim (13 km2) to other parts of the Taiz Governorate. Several months later, satellite imagery revealed the construction of a military base runway on the volcanic Island. Perim is now empty of its original inhabitants, according to media reports.
An Emirati military base on Perim Island (Mayyun in Arabic) on the Bab al-Mandab Strait
Perim Island has historically divided the Bab al-Mandab Strait into two waterways – whoever controls the island holds strategic influence over the strait. While Ansarallah’s statement about Emirati designs on Socotra was not entirely new, it raised hackles throughout the Arab world by confirming Israel’s military and intelligence presence on this key Yemeni island.
The UAE’s maritime ambitions
Many have questioned Abu Dhabi’s motivation for seizing Socotra and risking its relationships with Saudi Arabia and neighboring Oman (virtually overnight surrounded by UAE ports and bases). The UAE’s actions may be entirely attributed to the strategic vision of its President Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ) and his no-longer secret desire to establish an Emirati maritime empire –from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea – by controlling the region’s key waterways.
The UAE’s economic reliance on these waterways is a clear driver of MbZ’s plans: non-petroleum commodity re-exports make up almost half of Abu Dhabi’s total exports. As such, maritime security is a top priority in the country’s foreign policy calculations.
The UAE currently controls 12 ports off the coast of Yemen, including Aden, Makha, Mukalla, Al-Dabba, Bir Ali, Belhaf, Rudum, Zoubab, Al-Khawkhah, Al-Khouba, Qena, and Al-Nashima. The country is also building a new port in Al-Mahra that will cost an estimated $100 million.
By controlling these ports and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the UAE can dominate one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, elevating its position in global and regional trade to a strategic player.
In addition to its aggressive accumulation of Yemeni ports, the UAE also has a significant presence in the Horn of Africa, where it currently controls two ports in Eritrea and one in Somalia. It previously owned a port in Djibouti, but this became a point of territorial friction between the two countries. The UAE’s control over these ports and their strategic location in the region allow it to project its power and expand its influence in East Africa.
Why is Socotra important to Israel?
The UAE and Israel share mutual security concerns over Iran’s regional ascension over the past decade. The Islamic Republic’s naval presence is expanding into many new waterways, and its seaborne activities from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea alarm both nations. Given Washington’s growing reluctance to engage its armed forces in West Asia, MbZ turned to the region’s military behemoth and main Iranian rival to help him execute his vision. Unlike Israel, no other regional state has the ability to garner unconditional US support – nor the willingness to cavalierly defy international law and territorial integrity.
Abu Dhabi has calculated that it stands to benefit from Israel’s intelligence network and early warning systems, particularly after its cities were subject to unprecedented Ansarallah missile and drone strikes in January 2022.
For Tel Aviv, its physical presence in any Arab state is perceived as a victory, which aligns with its ambitions for regional expansion. By establishing a base on Abd al-Kuri Island, Israel can reinforce its maritime security – around 25 percent of its trade passes through the Bab al-Mandab Strait. Another objective of the Israeli-Emirati military and intelligence hub could be to gather data or engage in espionage activities in the southern Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa.
During the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, Yemen – in partnership with Egypt – blocked the passage of Israeli ships and tankers from accessing the strategic strait, leading to disastrous consequences for Israel.
The tactic could be replicated under Ansarallah Chief Abdel Malak al-Houthi’s leadership, since the movement considers Israel one of its main regional adversaries. While it may seem like a distant possibility, if the war concludes under current Riyadh-Sanaa peace efforts and Ansarallah gains control of Yemen’s south, the movement will enjoy unusual leverage to obstruct Israeli shipments whenever Tel Aviv launches regional aggressions. It should be noted that Ansarallah has already publicly threatened, on several occasions, to strike sensitive Israeli sites with its new missile capabilities.
Moreover, there has been an ongoing “ghost ship war” between Israel and Iran for several years, with occasional reports of Iranian or Israeli ships being attacked in these waterways. Israel’s presence on Socotra Island could provide it with leverage over Iran in their waterway stand-off and enable Tel Aviv to counter Ansarallah inside Yemeni territory.
NATO’s Combined Maritime Forces
It is important to note that the involvement of the US in the Israeli-Emirati collaboration and actions in Yemeni waters is not confirmed. However, it is true that the US has been a maritime security provider for the Persian Gulf monarchies for decades, and its NATO-led Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) have been present in West Asian waters since 1983 – including leading hostile actions against Iraq and Somalia.
The CMF alliance has assumed responsibility for the security of four bodies of water: The Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and the Gulf of Aden.
But with China’s rapid rise as a global economic competitor, US policy pivotedfurther eastward, and Washington has sought to subcontract out its West Asian security policies to its regional allies.
As such, last December, the CMF assigned command of its Red Sea task force to the Egyptian Navy, who took over from US naval forces. In this regard, the UAE, backed by Israel, may be another candidate to lead a NATO-backed naval security operation in the region.
Map of the NATO-led Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) areas of operation in West Asian waterways
Implications for Iran and Saudi Arabia
Any Israeli expansion is likely to alarm Iran and vice versa, potentially leading direct or proxy clashes in various regional theaters. However, the presence of the UAE – Iran’s second-largest trading partner – in southern Yemen may limit Tehran’s options. Unless Iran perceives a serious security threat from the new “Arab-Israeli alliance,” it is unlikely to take any significant actions that could harm its trade relations with Abu Dhabi.
The war against Yemen has severely damaged Saudi Arabia’s image as a regional powerhouse. During the last few years, all major Saudi cities have been the subject of Ansarallah missile and drone strikes – including the country’s key oil infrastructure.
It has been humiliating for the Persian Gulf’s wealthiest and most heavily militarized state to have its vulnerabilities so completely exposed by West Asia’s poorest nation. In contrast, the UAE has thus far only benefited from the Yemen war and expanded its influence in the region.
Recently, there have been reports of a possible breakthrough in negotiations between Riyadh and Ansarallah, and observers are hoping for an early roadmap to end the conflict during the holy month of Ramadan. Obstacles are aplenty: The UAE is notably absent from the discussions, the Emirati-backed Yemeni separatists – the STC – reject any solution that doesn’t leave them in control of the south, and the US has sought to scuttle any final solution that undermines Washington’s regional leverage.
Liberating the island
Of all the stakeholders with interest in Socotra Island, none are ultimately as important as the Yemeni ones, primarily the UAE-backed STC, the Saudi-backed PLC, and Iran-backed Ansarallah.
In his most recent televised appearance, Ansarallah’s Abdel Malik al-Houthi stated: “We seek to defeat the aggression, whether on the islands, on land or at sea, and from anyone who violates our independence and the sovereignty of our country.” Unlike other leaders, al-Houthi’s threats are usually translated into action and Ansarallah will not hesitate to strike the Israeli-Emirati bases or seize their ships if the aggression continues.
Ansarallah is currently the strongest player in Yemen, controlling more than 80 percent of the country in terms of population density. On the other hand, the PLC is the most vulnerable of the three main Yemeni players, and Riyadh’s recent rapprochement agreement with Tehran has further weakened the group. If an agreement is reached between Riyadh and Sanaa, the PLC will have one of two options: to hand over their weapons or merge into Ansarallah’s armed forces.
On the other side of the spectrum, the UAE-backed STC is worried about ongoing peace talks and fears being left alone to fight head-to-head with Ansarallah-aligned armed forces.
The question now is whether there will be a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Ansarallah that excludes the UAE and its Yemeni proxies. If that happens, Sanaa’s armed forces will almost certainly turn their big guns on the Emiratis and their Yemeni interests. The Saudis will have already calculated this outcome as they seek to advance a deal with Ansarallah. In this event, it is unlikely that Riyadh will come to Abu Dhabi’s assistance. Their common goals in Yemen ended years ago.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
منذ مدة تمرّ العلاقات الأميركية السعودية بأزمة ثقة، وتأكيد الطرفين الأميركي والسعودي على الطابع الاستراتيجي لتحالفهما، لم ينف اعتراف الفريقين بأزمة في العلاقة التي كانت لها قواعد تقليدية تقوم على موقع مرجعي للسياسات السعودية الخارجية ترسمه سقوف السياسات الأميركية. وبدأت تتغيّر مع موقف سعودي يرسم هوامش مستقلة تتسع تدريجياً حتى طالت ما تعتبره واشنطن بداية مساس خطر بالثوابت، مثل الموقف من تدفقات الطاقة، ورفض السعودية الالتزام بالدعوات الأميركية لزيادة الإنتاج، والعقوبات على روسيا وتمسك السعودية بالتعاون معها كشريك كامل ضمن إطار أوبك بلاس من خارج نظام العقوبات، وصولاً الى العلاقات الصينية السعودية ووصفها أميركياً بالإنقلاب على العلاقة التاريخية الأميركية السعودية، وتوصيف الرياض لها ضمن إطار الشركات المتعددة، حتى خرجت مواقف أميركية رسمية من البيت الأبيض ووزارة الخارجية تتحدّث عن أن العلاقة مع الرياض قيد التقييم، وأن هذا التقييم سينتهي بإجراءات.
في هذا السياق يقرأ الخبراء التعقيدات المرافقة لظهور التوجه السعودي نحو السعي لتمديد الهدنة في اليمن وفق مقاربة تراعي مطالب حركة أنصار الله، والحديث السعودي عن الحاجة للانفتاح على الدولة السورية، والنقاش السعودي حول الوضع في لبنان، حيث ظهر استعداد سعودي لمشاريع تسويات في الملفين اليمني والسوري لا تنضبط بالسقوف السابقة التي اعتمدتها السعودية سابقاً، حملتها تصريحات سعودية واضحة تتحدث علناً عن استحالة الاستمرار بالسياسات السابقة، ككلام وزير الخارجية السعودية حول سورية، ويبدو للمتابعين أن هذا التراجع السعودي عن السقوف العالية تجاه اليمن وسورية، والإنفتاح على خيارات جديدة يمكن أن تنجح في صناعة التسويات، يرافقه موقف سعودي سلبي تجاه التسوية في لبنان، بل موقف سعودي بسقف أعلى من الموقف الأميركي في السلبية تجاه فرص تسوية تخرج لبنان من الاستعصاء الخانق في مقاربة الاستحقاق الرئاسي، وهو ما يعتقد الخبراء أنه نتاج كون السعودية في اليمن تقاتل بجيشها، وفي العلاقات العربية والدولية حيث القضية السورية حاضرة تستنزف بسمعتها ومكانتها، بينما لا تتكبد أي أكلاف في لبنان، حيث تستثمر حراك أطراف لبنانية مستعدة لضبط إيقاعها على التوقيت السعودي، وهي تحاول أن تعوض عبر المكاسب الممكن تحقيقها عبر التصعيد والتشدد في لبنان، ما سوف يكون عليها تقديمه من تنازلات أو تكبده من أكلاف في تسويات ممكنة في ملفي اليمن وسورية. ويعتبر الخبراء ان هذه الصلة هي التي تفسر البطء في مساري التسوية في اليمن وسورية، بانتظار أن يؤتي التشدد والتصعيد في لبنان بعض الثمار، أو يسلك طريق التقدم.
مقابل هذه المقاربة ثمة مقاربة مخالفة في تفسير وتوصيف مسار الموقف السعودي تجاه اليمن وسورية ولبنان، واستطراداً ما تسميه بتعقيدات العلاقة الأميركية السعودية، وتقول هذه المقاربة إن الحاجة الماسة لتحقيق تقدم سعودي في اليمن وسورية ولبنان، سواء في سلوك خط التسويات أو التصعيد ترتبط بالحاجة لتسهيل أميركي، حيث لواشنطن مقاربة لا تتقاطع في النظرة مع الحسابات السعودية، والحساب الأميركي نحو سورية عبرت عنه زيارة قائد القوات الاميركية الى شرق الفرات لإعلان التمسك بتعطيل أي انفتاح على الدولة السورية وإعلان التمسك بالكانتون الكردي. وقد ترجمت هذا الموقف تصريحات أميركية متكررة تحذر من الانفتاح على الدولة السورية، وفي اليمن لا تزال واشنطن تأمل أن تنتزع من أي تسوية لوقف الحرب في اليمن، ترتيبات تتصل بأمن الملاحة في الممرات المائية التي يسيطر عليها أنصار الله وخصوصاً مضيق باب المندب، وضمانات لأمن كيان الاحتلال، وصلة ذلك بمستقبل السلاح الصاروخي للأنصار، وشرعنة قواعد أميركية في الأرض اليمنية وتسهيلات لحركة الطائرات الأميركية المسيرة في الأجواء اليمنية، بينما لا تمانع واشنطن بتسوية في لبنان تستوحي الطريقة التي تم عبرها ترسيم الحدود البحرية للبنان تفادياً لقيام حزب الله بوضع فائض قوته على الطاولة وتهديد أمن «إسرائيل»، وهي بذلك ترسم سقفاً للمقاربة اللبنانية أدنى من السقف السعودي وأكثر انفتاحاً على خيارات التسوية. – تملك واشنطن مفاتيح التعطيل والتسهيل، وهي تستخدمها عبر رسائل مشفرة نحو الرياض، فتعرض عليها منحها تفويضاً مشروطاً في لبنان لقيادة الاستحقاق الرئاسي بشروطها، مقابل انضباط الرياض بالسقوف الأميركية لملفات اليمن وسورية، وهذا ما يربك الحسابات السعوية ويفسر التباطؤ في رسم الخيارات وتظهير المواقف، لكن الوقت يضيق، ففي سورية تسارع تركي نحو دمشق وموعد يقترب لعقد القمة العربية في الرياض التي يريدها السعوديون مناسبة لا ينالها سواهم لعودة سورية الى الجامعة العربية، وفي اليمن حدود لاستعداد أنصار الله للانتظار ومنح المهل، وفي لبنان تغلق الأبواب على الرهانات الرئاسية التي قيل للسعودية إنها رهانات رابحة ويتقدم الخيار المقابل بثقة، بينما تضع المقاومة الأميركي أمام معادلة تحميله مسؤولية إدامة الفراغ ومنع التسويات وصولاً إلى الفوضى وتضع مقابلها استعدادها للحرب على الكيان، فتنشأ دينامية الجنرال وقت التي لا تدع مجالاً لمواءمة قسمة الحقل على قسمة البيدر، ويصير على العشاق أن يتفرقوا لأن الدف قد تمزق، فلا تبقى السعودية قادرة على ضبط ايقاعها في اليمن وسورية على التوقيت الأميركي ولا تبقى اميركا قادرة على ضبط إيقاعها في لبنان على التوقيت السعودي. هي شهور فاصلة ستقول الكثير.
بعدما تبدّدت الأحلام بفرض خريطة طريق تحكم الاستحقاق الرئاسي عنوانها السعي لتجميع الغالبية اللازمة لانتخاب المرشح ميشال معوض، أي 65 صوتاً، وبدأت جبهته الداعمة تتفكك ومجموع ناخبيه يتقلص، منذ قرّر الحزب التقدمي الاشتراكي الخروج من هذه الجبهة نحو ترشيح قائد الجيش وآخرين كخيارات متفق عليها مع شركاء ترشيح معوّض وفي مقدمتهم القوات اللبنانية بالانتقال إلى الخطة باء، وبدعم الخارج الراعي والمساند، صارت الخطة باء في الواجهة وانتهى الرهان على ترشيح معوض وتحول الى حصان أعرج عاجز عن المضي في السباق، وقد انفض الثلث المعطل المفترض من حوله، فكيف بالسعي لتجميع الغالبية.
في الخطة باء سعي لتمرير إمكانية انتخاب قائد الجيش دون تعديل دستوري وطرحه مرشحاً توافقياً لا يمثل ما يمثله معوض من استفزاز بخطاب عدائي للمقاومة، وهو المرشح الجدّي للحلف الداخلي والخارجي المناوئ للمقاومة، ليس بالضرورة لاعتباره مناوئاً، بقدر اعتباره مؤهلاً لخلط الأوراق وإرباك الحسابات، لكن الخطة باء أصيبت بالمقتل وسقطت بالضربة القاضية مع إعلان رئيس مجلس النواب استحالة انتخابه دون تعديل دستوري، باعتبار غياب الإجماع الذي تحقق في التسوية السياسية التي تمت في الدوحة ومن ضمنها وصول العماد ميشال سليمان الى رئاسة الجمهورية، يجعل أي انتخاب دون تعديل الدستور عرضة لطعن مؤكد ينتهي بإبطال الانتخاب.
صار الفريق المناوئ للمقاومة خالي اليدين من أي مرشح، ولا خطة ج، وليس من السهل إنتاج مرشح ثالث وتجميع الثلث المعطل من حوله لتحقيق التوازن التفاوضي في مواجهة الإعلان المتتابع لدعم ترشيح فرنجية وحشد تأييد يتجاوز الثلث المعطل ويقترب من الأغلبية وراءه، وبالتالي لم يعد هذا الفريق المناوئ هو الفريق المفاوض المقابل لمؤيدي فرنجية، بل هو واحد من مجموعة أطراف مدعوة للحوار طلباً للتوافق حول الاستحقاق الرئاسي، وهي أطراف تتراوح في أحجامها وتتفاوت في مقاربتها، وليس بينها أي خيار قادر على تجميع الثلث المعطل منفرداً.
العودة للحوار اليوم تحظى بموافقة كتل نيابية تمثل أكثر من ثلثي مجلس النواب، وهو النصاب اللازم لانتخاب الرئيس، وعلى مناوئي المقاومة الاختيار بين مقاطعة الحوار وتظهير حجمهم الفعلي العاجز عن تعطيل النصاب، وهذا أمر جيد، أو المشاركة في الحوار منعاً لانكشاف تراجع حجمهم، وهذا جيد ايضاً.
عنقود العنب يؤكل حبة حبة، والحبة الناضجة اليوم هي إلى الحوار در.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 