Yemen’s political-military mess cannot be solved now, or anytime in the foreseeable future, despite the UN announcement of another negotiated deal to halt the fighting – for now. Iranian-backed Houthi rebels will continue their assault on the Saudi/UAE-backed Yemeni government in what appears to be a horrendous quagmire in a strategic place at the narrow bottom of the Red Sea.
Yemen is a corrupt, ungovernable, backward, warlike country. A military victory by the Saudi/UAE/Yemen government “coalition” over the Houthis wouldn’t fix that and would leave the “victors” with an occupation that would necessarily last indefinitely and bleed the occupiers.
The US has already done that – in Afghanistan, which is probably only marginally better than Yemen. But the Taliban is, in fact, rising again and if the US withdraws, it is clear that the US-backed government will collapse. We have been there 18 years at a financial cost of $1.1 trillion. But more importantly, almost 2,500 Americans have been killed and over 20,000 wounded, not counting the thousands who have returned with serious psychiatric conditions such as PTSD. There is no “victory” to be had in Afghanistan.
This may be why the Trump administration has refused to increase the US military participation in the Yemen war by inserting ground troops, despite increasing pressure from Saudi Arabia and the UAE to do so. We are in far enough. America is supplying smart weapons and other munitions to the Coalition. US assistance includes refueling Coalition aircraft on bombing missions, providing intelligence and probably guiding Saudi and UAE aircraft to targets – not always successfully.
They have succeeded only in deepening the misery of a miserable country – more Yemeni civilians are being killed than Houthi fighters. The blockade of Yemen’s ports has generated a humanitarian disaster, including starvation, disease, and appalling lack of medical care. From news reports it is clear that only a fraction of the aid needed is getting through, and what happens to that is unclear.
Hawkish Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) has blocked the sale of additional smart weapons both on humanitarian and strategic grounds.
If there is a case for doing “something” in Yemen, it is that the country sits in a strategic position – the nexus of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, and in the “heel of the boot” of Saudi Arabia. Iran would love to have a base on the western side of the Saudis – its arch-rival. Thus, Iran has been supplying the Houthis with military “advisors” and weapons including ballistic missiles. An Iranian political and military takeover of Yemen would allow it to have naval and air bases that can threaten the Emirates and Saudi Arabia, threaten Israeli, Saudi, Egyptian, and Jordanian shipping, and curtail America’s ability to operate freely in the region.
It is Iran that must be dealt with, not Yemen. The US must make its strategic interests and its position absolutely clear – that the United States will not tolerate a highly armed Iranian proxy state in Yemen. And it must be prepared to enforce red lines. The US must:
- Make it clear to Iran that any attempt by the Islamic Republic to set up bases in Yemen will be blocked by US air strikes.
- Interdict Iranian and neutral cargo ships carrying contraband cargo to Yemen. Specifically, this means stopping the transfer of long-range weapons – primarily ballistic missiles and anti-ship missiles. The UN has already banned Iranian arms exports, but Iran has flouted the UN without penalty. This would mirror the Proliferation Security Initiative.
- Quarantine Yemen the same way the US quarantined Cuba during the 1962 missile crisis.* The quarantine will be aimed at Iran and any other power operating on behalf of or financed by Iran to deliver missiles or objectionable weapons or equipment to Yemen.
- Make it clear that Iran is engaging in acts of war when it supplies long-range weapons used against other countries – such as the missile strikes on both civilian and military targets in Saudi Arabia
- Destroy launch sites and missile stockpiles just as Israel is destroying Iranian weapons going to Hezbollah in Syria. Israel has avoided direct participation in the Syrian civil war but protects its interests. Because the proposed air strikes in Yemen would be furthering the American objective of keeping Iran out of Yemen, they should be carried out by the US Air Force, not the Coalition (whose performance has anyway been erratic, to say the least).
- Block communications between Iran and Yemen using national means such as shutting down Internet links, blocking PTT (Post, Telegram and Telecommunications) nodes, and other steps intending to isolate Iran from Yemen.
- Step up radio, TV and Internet broadcasts to the Iranian people with clear and unambiguous messages that Iran’s leaders are risking the well-being of the Iranian people in another overseas war. The Iranian people have been demonstrating against such adventurism.
These steps constitute the imposition of actionable red lines focused on American policy toward Iran – not against Yemen and not in the name of the Coalition. They will make it hard for Iran to declare victory. They will also protect American and allied interests in the Red Sea region while keeping American boots out of Yemen, providing a viable way to deal with an unfolding threat in a vital part of the world.
*John F. Kennedy sent a letter to Nikita Khrushchev declaring that the United States would not permit offensive weapons to be delivered to Cuba, and demanded that the Soviets dismantle the missile bases already under construction or completed, and return all offensive weapons to the Soviet Union.
Stephen Bryen is a regular contributor to Asia Times. Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of the Jewish Policy Center in Washington DC. and is a leading specialist in US defense policy and Middle East affairs.
An unabashed propaganda piece that speaks of a Yemeni government that no longer exists, a president who resigned and lives out of a suitcase outside of Yemen, a so-called coaltion that is devised by the U.S. that commits war crimes by bombing civilians while mercenaries on the ground are paid by the Saudi regime and the minnow sheikhdoms of the Persian Gulf.
Furthermore, Yemen, which has endured many aggressions by the bogus "princes" of Arabia, has a culture and history that the 80-year-old Saudi regime lacks. The U.S, in supporting the Arab petrostates to wage war against a country that has neither an air force nor air defenses, is merely extending its catalogue of failures in the region that has brought nothing but death and destruction.
The Writers forgot that the Yemen conflicts has a very long history even before the current Saudi led conflict with the blessing of the US. All the Saudi weapons has its origin in US industrial military complex. It is no secret that the Saudi led intervention is causing untold suffering to the civilians, with the blessing from the US. Even though the Bad-el-Manded is a significant choke point, no local powers has dared to hold it hostage to global shipping. To suggest it is the very height of hypocrisy as if the US naval power is not up to par. The US just need to tell the Saudi to toll the line to tone down the conflict, not the Iranians.
The author seems to be high on kat.
Draw a line in the sand while the USA has thousands of bases all over. Children and civilians dying only for freedom. And the US and naked Saudis bombing them to impose a kleptocracy, that will end up opening a thousand wahabi madrassas to enlighten the Yemini population.
Why don’t you wake up and smell what you are shoveling?
Amazed that this got published here, there are so many msm news outlets publishing such hogwash that gets peddled as news and insight. Why bother putting it here?
Maybe the so so smart Bryen Family should be asking the same thing from the Wahhabist hellhole——-the country still stuck in the 7th Century——–the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia——–this article is JUNK News!!
well
There is a "blockade of Yemen’s ports" and yet "Iran has been supplying the Houthis with military advisors and weapons including ballistic missiles."
How does that work?
In fact the domestic Yemen political differences, unrecognized n this propaganda piece, got much deeper than any Iran interest.
I agree. The authors show a total lack of knowledge as to what is actually going on in Yemen and a simple, Iran must be destroyed, mentality. Not worth reading.
Author who wrote this article and Editor who approved it needs their head to be checked.
And yet the article is correct that the Houthis are funded and supported by Iran and would collapse if that support was withdrawn. So what do you propose should be done to end the conflict?
All fair points. But what do you propose instead? Allow Iran to move in and take over?
Douglas Houck Sounds like Goldman v2.
Once again some Israelis are bragging about Iranian conspiracy. The writers either don’t know a shit or are paid by MBS. Interesting they mention how many Americans are being killed or wounded without saying a word of how many thousands of Afghan lives have been lost. It says something about which life they mean is worth mentioning. Americans never win in Afghanistan, Iraq , Libya or Iran and their puppets in Riyadh never win in Yemen despite their sophisticated weapons(which they use to slaughter civilians). They don’t win, because they do not care about the people in these countries.
Don’t forget that it is the sick mind of the Saudis that feeds Taliban, ISIS and Al Qaida.
The fact that the Coalition of evil forces from Saudi Arabia, Israel, UAE and US cannot prevail over The Houthies is not because of Iranian involvement. Houthies are worriers of their own. It’s because of their incompetency in battle with real worriers. It is their cowardice act of butchering civilians and their atrocities beyond imagination that makes every Yemenites to stand up against them .
Don’t talk about the Iranian People. They may be demonstrating for their own reasons but it doesn’t give anybody the right to take them hostage in their own sick agenda.
US may draw as many lines in the sand as they wish. They will be buried in that sand along with the “coalition” if they do not mind.
Darrell Burgan
https://m.huffingtonpost.in/entry/iran-houthis-yemen_n_7101456
Iran acted responsibly from the start.
It’s not Yemen that’s invading Saudi Arabia, it’s the other way around.
It’s not Yemen that wants a puppet to rule Saudi Arabia, it’s the other way around
It’s very simple, stop arming the Saudis, stop refueling their bombers, stop covering up for their, and your own (West’s), war crimes by writing such incredulous claptrap and the war will stop.
The Saudis want to starve an honorable people into submission because they could not bribe them to submit or win another "whirlwind war". The only surrender the Saudis want is a total one.
STEPHEN BRYEN and SHOSHANA BRYEN who are paying you all? You all are propagandist for the Anglo Zionist Amerikkkan empire. Get outta here with that sick mess…You alll are pitiful!
The problem lies not in the heads of the authors of this article but in their pockets. The CIA has paid them a hefty sum of money to write this article. The purpose is to fool the ignorant and stupid American population.
USA has withdrawn from the UN Human Rights committee, US has withdrawn Iran nuclear treaty, US has withdrawn Paris environmental protection treaty, US has withdrawn world trade treaties, US has withdrawn from …, why doesn’t the US do Yemenis as well as the world a favour by withdrawing all its military and other toxic covert ops from Yemen and go home. Nobody in the world wants the US drawing any line in anywhere not just in the sand. Go home Yankee, you are not wanted, not invited and not loved not just in Yemen, also in the world.
Darrell Burgan, US is the Empire of Chaos, it does not resolve anything but to create more chaos and wreak havoc wherever and whenever it goes. Wars, deaths, misery, destruction, hunger, atrocities, … follow the American footsteps. American go home is the prerequisite to all peaceful and meaningful solutions. Get the hell out of the rest of the world, Yankee, nobody needs you.
what a piece of garbage- only the jews can take land from others and they are teaching their pet Saudi’s to do the same thing now in Yemen. Saudi Arabia attacks and murders Yemeni’s and Iran is to blame for it. What a great advance logic the two authors have.
Darrell Burgan The Syrian Freedom fighters was also funded and supported by Saudis and US
The authors of this piece, Stephen and Shoshana Bryen, are long time pro Israeli operatives within the US. Stephen was one of the founders of JINSA, the Jewish Inst. for National Security Affairs, the first neocon organization which Colin Powell blamed for the Iraq War and his wife, Shoshana, who once headed JINSA, now runs the Jewish Policy Center. Now, both are part of a push by the same group that Powell condemned that are trying to get the US into another war on Israel’s behalf.
In his book The Armageddon Network, Michael Saba, a former director of an Arab-American organization, wrote that in 1978 he saw Bryen, then a staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, offer "Pentagon documents on the bases" to officials of the Israeli government during a meeting in a Washington restaurant. Writes Saba: "After I reported this incident to the Justice Department, FBI and Justice Department investigators gathered sufficient evidence on Dr. Bryen’s activities to recommend he be brought before an investigative grand jury for espionage. The case was quietly closed, however, by Philip Heymann, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, a close personal friend and associate of Dr. Bryen’s attorney. Bryen was never formally charged or made to account for his actions under oath."
Darrell Burgan You want the Saudis and the UAE and America to take over? This conflict needs to end and not by military means. Right now the people are being killed by the new axis of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and America. War crimes are being committed and surely there are and will be more refugees who will be turned down by the immigrant hating president in the White House.