A COALITION of Sunni Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, has pledged its active and long-term support to the internationally-recognised Yemeni government in its fight against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, writes World Review expert Bernard Siman.
Yemen President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi asked for the show of military strength which was launched on March 26, 2015, two days before the Arab League Summit on March 28-29, 2015.
Iran and the international community did not expect a response to the Houthi rebel takeover in Yemen.
Houthi fighters, and their ally former Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh (1990-2012), had taken control of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and seized Yemeni armed forces depots containing advanced weapons as they swept through Yemen on their way to Aden in the south.
President Hadi, who was Ali Abdullah Saleh’s vice president, became president in February 2012. He is a staunch ally in the fight against militant Islamic terror group al-Qaeda.
The Houthi placed him under house arrest in January 2015, but he fled to Saudi Arabia on March 31 having declared Yemen’s port city Aden, the new capital.
Support from nine Sunni Arab states followed with the launch of Operation Decisive Storm on March 26 - a ferocious military air and naval assault on Houthi positions in Yemen. The aim is to dislodge the Iran-backed coalition of Houthi rebels.
This will ultimately remove Iran's geostrategic advantage.
The surprising, and paradigm-shifting, element is the direct and unequivocal involvement of Pakistan, a declared nuclear power, as the 10th member of the core of what will form the Arab Joint Defence Force, although Pakistan is not an Arab country.
Pakistan is a Sunni country with extremely close links to Saudi since their cooperation during the Soviet war in Afghanistan from 1979-1989. It is said Pakistan’s nuclear bomb is the 'Sunni bomb', and was reportedly financed by Saudi Arabia.
Operation Decisive Storm has claimed complete control of Yemen air space and successfully blockaded most of Yemen's ports. This denies Iran the ability to deliver weapons, foreign fighters and advisers to the Houthi coalition.
The air campaign is expected to last six months, indicating a resolve to continue the fight until Iran's influence in Yemen is removed.
This is a regional Shia-Sunni conflict in which no global blessing was sought from the United Nations or the United States. The Obama administration has subsequently offered logistical and intelligence support.
There is deep hostility between the Saudis and the Houthis, who are part of a wider Shia sect.
The Houthis have allied themselves with Iran since the 1990s and accepted Iranian aid, arms and training. They rose against Yemen’s central government and have posed a continuing threat to the stability of Saudi-Yemeni border areas.
Operation Decisive Storm effectively deprives Iran from claiming superiority in regional security in the nuclear negotiations as its geopolitical advantage is finally challenged by the Arab coalition.
Limiting Iran's claim to a dominant security role in the region minimises the political and security dimension of Iran's scope in the negotiations.
Pakistan’s direct involvement in Operation Decisive Storm is a new dimension in the regional security equation. Its involvement and pledge to defend the territorial integrity and security of Saudi Arabia has reportedly rattled Tehran.
Iran is now effectively in direct confrontation with the Sunni nuclear power, Pakistan. The clear, unequivocal and proactive stance of Pakistan is the culmination of decades of Saudi strategy to cultivate Pakistan since the 1970s.
Pakistan’s direct involvement is a clear indication that the new regional strategic balance is no longer only drawn on Arab-Persian lines but on Sunni-Shia lines too.
Turkey, another regional Sunni power, also supported the operation.
Sunni Arab regimes, in particular, were stung by how the Obama administration abandoned its long-term ally, Egypt’s former President Hosni Mubarak. They realised that America has abandoned its long-held strategy - akin to a covenant with these states and safeguarded over decades - that regional stability goes hand-in-hand with regime security.
America’s last-minute climbdown over its threat to bomb Syria for using chemical weapons removed the last vestiges of trust in US reliability.
This lack of confidence in the global framework led directly to Saudi Arabia’s dramatic decision to decline to take its seat at the United Nations Security Council in 2014.
The Gulf States continue to view the twin threat of the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran in similar terms as Egypt. A regional block was therefore created.
America’s lack of leadership in the region at a critical time following the Iraq war, the rise of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and regional vacuums created by the development of ungovernable spaces is now exploited by a plethora of non-state actors threatening internationally recognised borders of sovereign states.
Many have warned Yemen is one of these.
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Publication Date:
Fri, 2015-04-10 06:15
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