Saudi Arabia Launches Massive Terror Bombing of Yemen

The Bush-Obama legacy strikes again. Saudi Arabia launches terror bombing against the people of Yemen.

A desperate Saudi Arabia and allies, with reported logistical and intelligence backing from the United States, launched a massive aerial bombardment of the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, and several other cities, causing the death of dozens of citizens and soldiers. The 100 sorties of “Operation Firmness Storm” were in reaction to the massive victory of the national forces under the leadership of the Al-Houthis and their Ansarullah armed group, who managed in a few days to take over the southern part of the country. They had taken over the capital Sana’a in September 2014.

The Saudis and their allies have been spreading the lie that what Ansarullah did was a “Shi’a coup” against a legitimate government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi. Both claims are pure lies. Al-Houthis, who are Zeidi Shi’as indeed, reacted in last June as a national force to unite the people against a corrupt government and a Saudi-manufactured political agreement that kept the country split, and the corruption alive. The Houthis are supported by the youth of the revolution of 2011 (who are not Shi’a), by the former armed forces still loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh (who are not Shi’a), by many political parties (socialist and nationalist who are not Shi’a), by many Sunni tribes (who are not Shi’a) and by a large faction of the South Yemen “separatist” movement (who are not Shi’a). In a matter of a few months, Al-Houthis and their allies managed to clean large parts of the country of al-Qaeda terrorists, which the U.S. and its allies failed to do in more than 10 years. They had threatened in the last few days to completely eliminate al-Qaeda and ISIS from southern Yemen. They had launched a national dialog among all the above parties to form a national government and reform the constitution.

Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states, in collaboration with the Obama Administration and the British, tried to split the nation again last month as they withdrew their embassies from Sana’a and moved them to Aden, to which Hadi had fled from house arrest, and claimed to represent a legitimate government. Hadi’s term as president ended in February 2014 and was prolonged one year, and thus cannot claim to be president anymore.

Now that Ansarullah and their allies took over Aden on March 25, the Saudis stepped in to destroy the nation of Yemen and remove any hopes of a national dialog. A republican Yemen, with a religiously tolerant culture, has been the Wahhabi Al-Saud’s worst nightmare, as they are connected by long borders and by historical contacts into Saudi Arabia.

What made the affairs more complicated, was the Iranian covert and overt support for Al-Houthis, which confirmed for those subject to the Saudi propaganda that Al-Houthis were Iranian/Shi’a agents. The Saudis and Gulf states have put pressure on Egypt to support the anti-Houthi campaign, using the Egyptian concern over the passage to the vital Suez Canal from Yemen’s Bab El-Mandib Strait, when the Houthis advance to Taaz in southwest Yemen, which they did last Tuesday, March 24. Without an international and regional Egyptian-Iranian diplomatic intervention, not only Yemen, but the whole Arabian Peninsula will be set ablaze. Shi’a minorities in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain can be mobilized to destabilize the Saudis. Iran, the largest so-called Shi’a power in the region has been locked up in diplomatic negotiations with the U.S. over the nuclear program and lifting the sanctions. The Saudis have calculated that the Iranians would not intervene directly lest they sabotage their chances of successful negotiations by the deadline of March 31. This can prove to be a grave miscalculation.