January 21, 2015 | Quote

Yemen Falls Into Iran’s Orbit as Region Caught Asleep at the Wheel


A senior Iranian official told Reuters last year the pace of money and arms getting to the Houthis had increased since their seizure of Sanaa.

The GCC took its eye off the ball in Yemen. It let its own backyard go up in flames,” David Andrew Weinberg, a specialist on Gulf affairs and a senior fellow at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.

“By fiddling while Yemen burns, the Saudis have given Iran a huge new advantage along its southern border,” he said.

”The Saudis now are confronted with Islamic State and Iran-backed Shi'ite insurgents on its northern border and hegemonic Houthis as well as AQAP on its southern one.”

Some of the Houthi’s greatest advances took place while the regional and international attention was focused on the expansion of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, said Weinberg.

In addition, he noted, during that same period, the GCC was busy trying to patch up the dispute between Qatar and the other Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia.

“Given that the Qataris played a leading role in persuading Yemeni strongmen Ali Abdullah Saleh to give up power in 2011, the Gulf states were in less of a position to exert leverage in Yemen without Doha being prepared to take part,” continued Weinberg.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is currently trying to manipulate oil prices so that the low prices would stop increasing “foreign competition from new, high-cost oil projects and sticking it to Iran and Russia.”

Weinberg assesses that it may be too late to push the Houthis back.

A military intervention backed by Gulf states could possibly turn the Houthis back, “but the Saudis tried that in 2009 against and found themselves embarrassingly defeated,” he said, adding, “Now the Houthis are only stronger.”

Oren Adaki, a research analyst of the Arab world at the same Washington Based think tank, and who closely follows Yemen, told the Post that “Saudi influence in Yemen is at an all-time low.”

“The Houthi takeover of Yemen means absolutely everything to Iran. They are watching events unfold there like an investor watching his investments return hefty dividends,” said Adaki.

“Iranian officials could hardly contain themselves during the first days following the Houthi seizure of Sana'a in late September. They openly boasted that Sana'a had fallen into their sphere of influence and eagerly announced that they support the Houthis.”

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Issues:

Iran