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Alleged “Attack” On U.S. Ships To Justify Continued War On Yemen
Last night the U.S. launched cruise missiles against three radar stations along the western Yemeni coast. The area is formally under control of the Sanaa government, an alliance of Houthi tribal groups from north Yemen and parts of the Yemeni army under control of the former president Saleh. But their real control is patchy and especially around Taiz and further south al-Qaeda and local south Yemeni independence fighters are predominant.
The attack comes after U.S. ships were allegedly attacked by missiles fired from the coast. All those missiles "fell into the sea short of the destroyer, which was in international waters in the Red Sea." (Were these just short range RPG-36 al-Qaeda had received?) The Houthi as well as the Yemeni army (twice) have officially denied that they fired missiles and to have attacked any U.S. asset. Former president Saleh accused the Saudis and their al-Qaeda proxies and asked for an investigation. No one in Yemen had heard rumors of preparations or execution of such attacks. There is no public evidence that any such attack ever happened. All such claims are solely based on the word of the U.S. military. The Houthi/Saleh government in Sanaa demands an official UN investigation into the issue.
Two weeks ago the Houthis had fired on and destroyed a United Arab Emirates fast supply ship. The missile used was decent medium range anti-ship missile of probably Chinese origin. The ship was transporting weapons and anti-Houthi troops between Assab in Eritrea and Aden in south Yemen. They had proudly admitted the attack and published video of it. Earlier smaller Saudi ships which blockaded the coast were attacked by local fishermen and sunk. The UAE has occupied parts of south Yemen (Dubai Port International would like to control the Aden harbor) and the UAE troops and proxy forces are immediate enemy of the Yemeni forces. But it was clear that any attack on a U.S. ship would only increase trouble for the Houthi forces. They had and have no sane reason to commit such an attack.
A recap how we got here. After some tribal upheaval in 2011-12 the President Saleh was pressed to move aside and his vice president Hadi was installed as president with a two year mandate. The installation of a new national government failed when Hadi and his sponsors denied any seat at the table for the large northern Houthi tribes (some 45% of the total population). Those tribes revolted and occupied the capital Sanaa. Hadi, then in the third year of his two year mandate, resigned, retracted and later verbally resigned again. The UN tried to negotiate a settlement but the UN envoy was ousted on behalf of Saudis and the agreed upon unity cabinet was not installed:
Yemen’s warring political factions were on the verge of a power-sharing deal when Saudi-led airstrikes began a month ago, derailing the negotiations, the United Nations envoy who mediated the talks said.
The Saudis, who had fought earlier wars against the Houthis, do not want them to have a role in any power structure. They claim that Houthi are Iranian proxies. There is no evidence for that at all and the claim is simply false. During some 18 month of war no sign of Iranian help, weapons or personal, has been seen. Even the NYT notes today:
American intelligence officials believe that the Houthis receive significantly less support from Iran than the Saudis and other Persian Gulf nations have charged.
The Sauds want their trusted puppet Hadi back in the presidential role with unlimited powers. He can be endlessly manipulated by them. But while the Sauds are much richer their people is not significantly bigger than Yemen. Yemen has some 26 million inhabitants while Saudi Arabia has some 29 million. Every Saudi attack against Yemenis creates new recruits who will attack Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. supports the attacks by the Saudis and the UAE. It delivers planes and ammunition, its aerial tankers refill the Saudi jets taking part – in total over 5,500 times since the bombing began. U.S. intelligence is used by the Saudis to plan their attacks. U.S. officers consult the Saudi planning cells and U.S. special forces are on the ground. It ships help to blockade the Yemeni coast. Despite such massive support the U.S. officially did not consider itself part of the conflict and even tried to negotiated some powersharing agreement as if it were a "neutral" force. That did not deceive anyone in Yemen but the U.S. public was gullible as ever about this.
That ended as more and more atrocities by Saudi attacks on hospitals, schools, markets and important infrastructure became public. After the recent Saudi attack (vid) on a funeral hall filled with people offering condolences the U.S. ran out of stupid excuses. The bombs used were U.S. manufactured. The attack killed over 200 and seriously wounded many more. The local hospitals are overwhelmed and the Saudis block any evacuation. Many of casualties are tribal elites and generals.
Cholera broke out in Yemen and people are dying of hunger. The U.S. has come under pressure over this and the Saudi attacks. The State Department spokesman was hopelessly trying to explain why the funeral attack was in "defense of Saudi Arabia" and different from less severe attacks in Syria which the U.S. condemns. A significant number of senators are pressing for an end to the support of the Saudi campaign. Moveon has started a petitions against the U.S. support and the Obama administration itself feared legal consequences.
An "attack" on U.S. assets that puts the U.S. into a justified "self defense" position against the Houthis makes all such concerns irrelevant.
Over the last weeks the Saudis have transported sponsored fighters aligned with al-Qaeda in Yemen from south Yemen to Saudi Arabia. These have now started to attack the Houthi areas in the north from the Saudi side of the border. All earlier such attempts miserably failed.
There are rumors that the U.S. attack on the radar stations is in preparation of a massive troop landing by UAE and Saudi mercenary forces currently assembling in the UAE rented and controlled port Assab in Eritrea. That is, in my view, quite possible.
Thanks for the link, Bo Dacious.
Chulov is in some sense correct, but he also provides a lot of spurious details that allow to trance whom he is stenographing.
Chulov is correct in the sense that Iran would definitely like to restore status quo ante, the chain of friendly countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon. Mutual military support would operate on inner routes, not vulnerable to harassment from foreign navies or traffic controllers. Surely, pockets of rebellion are not consistent with that plan, actually, no government wishes to tolerate such pockets, unless they “mind their own business”. Given that, Iran committed very limited forces so far for that project, which I attribute to the logic of limited war. Like Russia, their interest is in finishing the wars in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon as promptly as possible, but simply increasing the commitment can be more expensive that they can afford, and given the abilities of Gulf-West axis, to a large degree they can be counteracted. In more concrete terms, in Syria the forces supplied by Iran in some form seem to be on the order of 10,000 (sheer guess, I hope an intelligent one), doubling that would simply increase the recruitment of jihadis, and expanding to 100,000 would not fit the budget.
That said, why does Chulov offer a very twisted narrative of a “corridor to the Mediterranean” that follows very zigzagging route? Because it is pieced together from stories of his interlocutors. Turkish propaganda tries to scare the others about danger of independent or quasi-independent Kurds as giving such a corridor, so it duly goes through Syrian Kurdish cantons. Why the other segments of the route are so strangely twisted? Perhaps similar scare is issued about the activity of “popular committees” in Iraq and Iranian paramilitary (and military) in Syria, and some other assumptions. For example, it assumes that Syria will become a patchwork of independent cantons, and the route will have to circumnavigate cantons not friendly to Iran. This reminds me “facts” postulate by Israel-friendly experts, like “settlement blocks that everybody agrees will stay with Israel under any conceivable peace plan”. So even Iran cannot imagine using straight highways along Euphrates and straight from Aleppo to Latakia, because some cantons dear to Turkish hearts will exist forever “under any circumstances”. OTOH, Kurdish cantons cannot be tolerated because they will …. become a vector of Iranian influence. That is debatable at best, and contrary to the neocon dream of cultivating Kurds as the local vector of Western (and Israeli) influence, so it is a fingerprint of Turkish propaganda.
Like Iran and Russia, Turkey and the Gulfies would like to see a unitary Syria (and perhaps, Arab “Sunnistan” in Iraq because Arab Iraqi Shias are too numerous to control) as a part of “Sunni Axis”, a.k.a. “The Umma”. But either they abandon this idea due to the recognition of impossibility, or they play Chulov the version of fragmentation, where it is not necessary to unite all pieces of Iraq and Syria, which is an acceptable end-game for PNAC and all that ilk. Strategically, it would be sufficient to cut-off the Mediterranean coast from Iraq by a chain of Sunni cantons starting with one that is being created by Turkey. I see it as Sunni-supremacist vision package for Western acceptance.
Alas, there is rot in the West fomented by Russian trolls etc (this website included), so this “Western acceptance” is eroding. To give one example, for all his popularity among Londoners, the exhortation of the former mayor of London and current FM did not move masses to demonstrate against Russian war crimes. For that matter, the French FM quipped that organizing demonstration is an unusual role for a FM.
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Oct 14 2016 8:51 utc | 73
@Bo Dacious on pipelines
You put in a lot of facts, but the analysis and conclusion is flawed. Thanks for putting in the effort though, … best laugh I’ve had in a long time. 😉
Posted by: Oui | Oct 14, 2016 8:27:11 AM | 77
Actually, where your “Syria War = pipeline war” theory is concerned, Gareth Porter put in the facts, I just copy&pasted it here.
Porter writes:
”That claim has no credibility for a very simple reason: there was no Qatari proposal for Syria to reject in 2009. It was not until October 2009 that Qatar and Turkey even agreed to form a working group to develop such a gas pipeline project.
He showed that Syria didn’t block any pipelines from Qatar because no pipeline from Qatar would have made it across Saudi Territory, and for those like Oui who appear ignorant of even the most basic knowledge of Middle East geography: any pipeline heading Syria-ward from Qatar would first have to cross Saudi territory.
Porter writes:
And Middle East geopolitical analyst Felix Imonti reported at Oilprice.com in 2012 that Qatar had been forced to abandon the pipeline idea in 2010 because Saudi Arabia had not agreed to have it built across its territory.
Simple to understand, easy to check fact there.
Porter then wonders from where this ridiculous notion of Syria rejecting a Qatari pipeline originated:
Kennedy’s article asserts, “In 2009, according to WikiLeaks, soon after Bashar Assad rejected the Qatar pipeline, the CIA began funding opposition groups in Syria.”
But the article links to a Washington Post news report on the WikiLeaks cables on Syria that doesn’t support that charge at all
Again, a simple to understand, easy to check fact there.
The axiom was whether pipelines play a role in the warfare of the Near East, etc
No it wasn’t – you personally made a clear claim that the Syria War was because of Assad’s refusal to accommodate a Qatari pipeline – (pls don’t try and pretend you didn’t, because that would just be dishonest) – and Porter does a pretty convincing job of demonstrating the falsity of that claim.
In my post @BooMan with numerous links.
I have no idea what a “BooMan” is, – other than to note that it sounds like something a child might reference when discussing it’s nightmares – but I doubt knowing what a “BooMan” is would in anyway add to my understanding of this issue.
I narrated an article from The Guardian authored by Martin Chulov. My headline: “Teheran’s Road to the Sea, Another Big Lie from The Guardian”. It’s self-explanatory.
uhm, whatever – It’s a pity you weren’t astute enough to notice that Chulov’s ridiculous and false theory is actually quite similar to your own ridiculous and false theory, all Chulov did was replace Qatar with Iran. “Qatar wants a land route to the Med” vs “Iran wants a land route to the Med”
The rest of your comment is just waffle, seemingly designed to disguise the fact that you haven’t actually addressed anything Porter wrote on the subject, of “Syria War = pipeline war”, which is the theory you have been promoting.
Posted by: Bo Dacious | Oct 17 2016 10:16 utc | 91
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