Houthis: Iran's Trump Card in Middle Eastern Cold War

 

Salomé Rosa argues that the Iranian support for the political-religious rebel group Houthi has been effective in defeating the Saudi-led coalition, with the former earning an advantage over the latter in one of the battlegrounds of the current Middle Eastern Cold War: Yemen.

The Middle East is one of the most unstable regions in the world. The area has been the scene of war after war, which continuously appear to be capitalised by two countries playing a chess game for regional hegemony: Saudi Arabia and Iran. The dispute between the two regional powers is long-standing and has brought with it a number of negative impacts. As powerful actors, guided by strongly conflicting ideologies, both countries remain deeply involved in external and neighbouring conflicts, financing political representatives and movements with a view to wielding influence and achieve regional supremacy. In fact, since the Arab Spring, hostility has been embodied in a significantly intense competition, from which has been fostered a regional Cold War that has redefined the balance of power in the Middle East, forming a proxy warfare scenario.

Among the states targeted by this strategy is Yemen, the scene of a devastating civil war that has been raging for seven years and over which one of the worst humanitarian crises has erupted, with 14 million people affected to this date. The conflict has its roots in the Arab Spring of 2011, when a popular revolt in Yemen forced its long-time authoritarian president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to hand over the power to his vice president, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. On this account, it was widely expected that the political transition would lead to stability, but Hadi found himself saddled with economic and security problems, with attacks by jihadists and, above all, by Houthis, a Zaydi Shiite Muslim group that took advantage of the weakness in governance to pursue the battles fought in the past against Saleh.

The Houthis are a movement of Zaydi Shiite Muslims, significantly different in doctrine and beliefs from the Shiites who dominate other Islamic states. They emerged in the 1990s as a Zaydi resistance to Saleh's government and his corrupt regime, led by a leader called Hussein al-Houthi, from whom derives their name. In 2004, Saleh's army killed Hussein al-Houthi, simultaneously gathering forces to suppress the rebellion in Yemen's far north, especially in Saada province. As a result, with the resignation of President Saleh, in early 2014 the Houthis took control of the northern province of Saada and captured the country's capital, Sanaa, forcing President Hadi into exile in March 2015. Since then, the radical group has been expanding conquered territory, advancing south with the conquest of the city of Hudaydah in 2018 and Marib in 2021. 

The war that has been waged has been brutal. On one side, Yemen's neighbour, Saudi Arabia, has been intervening in the region since the 1960s through a coalition with the United Arab Emirates, created by both with the main objective of reversing Iranian power. In this regard, geographical continuity was a key factor in the decision, with the internal lines of communication between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi serving as a contributing factor. Their main aim was to restore the Hadi-led government in Sana'a. However, the conjuncture eventually turned to a rube that opened up fronts both south and north to enforce other ends, with an air offensive to overthrow the Houthis being launched in 2015 with the logistical and intelligence support from the US, UK and France.

On the other hand, Iran, while having a good relationship with the Houthis before the war, increased its military support to the movement, seeing it as a new opportunity to weaken Saudi Arabia. The support has been mainly translated into military training and weaponry, leading to the Houthis making progress on the Saudi border through short-range and large ballistic missiles, while using explosive drones to attack both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Due notably to the attacks by the Houthis, the UAE began a partial withdrawal from Yemen in June 2019, redeploying its forces from some of the occupied territories and withdrawing others from the central areas, such as Ma'rib. According to the issued, the decision to reassess its position and role in the war stemmed from the negative cost-benefit ratio that the conflict provided, likely to worsen in the future. Yet, its foreign policy agility was not enough to mitigate the Houthi offensive, which on 17th and 24th of January 2022 launched ballistic and cruise missiles along with uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs) of direct attack against targets in the UAE in an attempt to excessively reduce UAE presence in Yemen. 

Not only does this simultaneously weaken Saudi Arabia's presence in the conflict, but it ends up acting at the same time as the ending of the support granted by the US to Saudi-led offensive operations in Yemen, a decision issued by Joe Biden in February 2021, when he declared a rupture with the previous policy of Barack Obama's administration.  

This means that, while Saudi Arabia's two mostpowerful allies have declared a partial withdrawal from the war in Yemen, on the other hand, the Iranian-backed group remains in a clear superiority over its opponent, expanding its conquered territory over time, which could translate into a victory for the Houthis in the long-lasting Yemen war. As a result, in what consists of one of the battlegrounds in today's Cold War raging in the Middle East, Iran remains in clear supremacy against Saudi Arabia.

Source of the Image: Brookings

Salomé Cristina Lopes Rosa, Nº227712, Laboratório II (Análise de Política Externa)