Last Friday, December 17, the Wall Street Journal published an 'Exclusive' that claimed a breach of relations between the Houthis in Yemen and their Iranian benefactors. It is an example for how official spin and the hunt for 'exclusives' outweigh a reporters knowledge of local circumstance.
bigger
The piece, reproduced here in full by Yemen Online, asserted that the Houthi wanted to get rid of the Iranian ambassador to the parts of Yemen they hold:
A member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was smuggled into Yemen last year and named the ambassador to the country’s Houthi-rebel-controlled areas. Now, the Houthis want to send him back to Tehran, Middle Eastern and Western officials said.
The Houthi forces have asked Saudi Arabia, which maintains a sweeping air blockade of Yemen’s capital, to let the top Iranian diplomat in the country immediately fly back to Iran, a request seen by Saudi officials as a sign of strains between Tehran and the militant group.
…
“Irloo has become a burden for them,” said one regional official. “He’s a political problem.”
To me that immediately sounded like bullshit. I follow the war on Yemen and there are no signs that Iranian support for the Houthi is waning and there was no news of any trouble between both parties:
The Saudis told Houthi leaders that they wouldn’t let Iran fly a plane to Yemen to get Mr. Irloo, according to regional officials. Instead, the officials said, Mr. Irloo could only fly out on a plane from Oman or Iraq and would only be allowed to leave if the Houthis freed some high-profile Saudi hostages.
…
In recent days, Houthi leaders asked Saudi officials for permission to put Mr. Irloo on a flight back to Tehran, the regional and Western officials said. Houthi officials assured Riyadh that they wouldn’t replace Mr. Irloo with a new Iranian diplomat.Riyadh took this as a sign that the Houthis were trying to distance themselves from Tehran’s influence, according to regional officials. Houthi leaders told Riyadh that Mr. Irloo needed to leave to get better medical treatment after contracting Covid-19, the officials said. But regional officials said Mr. Irloo was still holding meetings in Yemen and said there were no signs he had Covid-19.
Today we learn that Ambassador Irloo has died of Covid-19:
Iran's ambassador to Yemen, Hassan Irloo, has passed away of COVID-19 complications after certain countries delayed his return home for medical treatment.
Irloo had earlier this week been repatriated from Yemen amid Saudi aerial blockade on the war-torn Arab country to receive treatment at a hospital in Tehran.
Saeed Khatibzadeh, spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, said the envoy passed away from complications related to the coronavirus in the early hours of Tuesday.
He said Irloo was transferred to the country in a “bad state” and due to “late cooperation” of some countries, a reference to Saudi Arabia.
Irloo had, like many Iranians of his age, a bad precondition that made a survival of Covid-19 very difficult:
A war veteran, Irloo had sustained injuries from chemical warfare attacks on Iran during Iraq’s 1980-88 imposed war, backed by the West.
He contracted the coronavirus at the place of his mission, and passed away early on Tuesday “despite undergoing all stages of treatment to improve his condition”, Khatibzadeh said.
The WSJ 'exclusive' was obviously planted by Saudi sources who tried to justify the delayed transfer of Ambassador Irloo and were spreading disinformation about a Iran Houthi split.
Dion Nissenbaum, the reporter who wrote the WSJ story, is based in Beirut and has lots of experience in the Middle East. He did some good work for McClatchy during the war on Iraq. It is sad to see him falling for the spin 'Middle Eastern and Western officials' were selling him.
To his excuse he had added this:
Iranian officials didn’t respond Friday to requests for comment. Houthi leaders didn’t respond to questions seeking comment.
However, Friday is the equivalent of Sunday in Muslim societies and nearly all officials will not have been in their office.
But the 'exclusive' spin could not wait for Iran to debunk it:
The Wall Street Journal claimed on Friday that the envoy showed no signs of COVID-19, and quoted anonymous officials from the Mideast and Western officials as saying that the ambassador was recalled to Tehran over "strains with the Ansarullah movement."
Tehran rejected the claims, stressing that Tehran-Sana’a relations are stronger than before.
Ibrahim al-Dailami, Yemen’s ambassador to Tehran, also dismissed the report in an interview with IRNA published on Sunday.
“We should not respond to such nonsense, which the American media publish from time to time in order to take advantage of the [dire situation] and poison the atmosphere,” Dailami said, adding that relations between Tehran and Sana’a were “developing rapidly.”
Ambassador Irloo was evacuated from Sanaa on an Iraqi plane on Saturday, December 18. He died last night.
The Saudis will see that as a 'win'.
Also last night they (again) bombed the airport of Sanaa and made any further evacuation and aid flights impossible:
UN aid flights into Yemen's rebel-held capital Sanaa have been halted by air strikes carried out by the Saudi-led coalition which supports the government, an airport official said Tuesday.
Because of coalition air strikes targeting the Huthi rebels, "the airport is no longer able to receive aircraft operated by the United Nations or international humanitarian organisations", the official told AFP.
Flights into Sanaa airport have been largely halted by a Saudi-led blockade since August 2016, but there have been exemptions for aid flights that are a key lifeline for the population.
The airport official, who asked not to be identified, called on the United Nations to secure a halt to the raids so that the airport could resume operations.
Those fireworks were probably the Saudi's way to celebrate the death of the Iranian envoy.