DUBAI, UAE – Fighting for an old desert city in war-torn Yemen has become key to understanding the wider tensions now inflaming the Middle East and the challenges facing any efforts by President Joe Biden’s administration to change American troops in the region.
Fighting has erupted in the mountains outside the Marib, as Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, who own Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, are trying to conquer the city, which is crucial to the country’s energy supply.
Saudi Arabia, which has led a military coalition since 2015, backing the exiled Sanaa government, launched an airstrike after an airstrike to blur the Houthi advance on Marib. The Houthis retaliated with drone and rocket attacks in the depths of Saudi Arabia, provoking global oil markets.
The battle for Marib is likely to determine the outlines of any political solution to Yemen’s second civil war in the 1990s. If captured by the houthi, the rebels can defend that advantage in negotiations and may even continue further south. If Marib is held by the internationally recognized Yemeni government, it will probably save its only fortress, as secessionists will challenge its authority elsewhere.
The fight is also squeezing a point of pressure on the strongest Arab allies in the Gulf of America and includes any US return to Iran’s nuclear deal. It even complicates the Biden administration’s efforts to slowly move long-term US military deployments to the Middle East to counter what it sees as the emerging threat from China and Russia.
The loss of Marib would be “the last bullet at the head of the internationally recognized government,” said Abdulghani al-Iryani, a senior researcher at the Center for Strategic Studies in Sanaa. “It will lay the groundwork for the dismantling of the Yemeni state. You are looking at a generation of instability and humanitarian crisis. You will also watch a free theater for regional mixing. ”
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THE ANCIENT OASIS BECOMES WAR IN FRONT
Located 120 kilometers (75 miles) east of Sanaa, Marib is located on the edge of the empty desert of the Arabian Peninsula at the foot of the Sarawat Mountains that stretch along the Red Sea. It is believed to be the home of the biblical queen of Sheba, which gave King Solomon riches of spices and gold. In the Qur’an, the site of the massive floods was the one that accompanied the collapse of its old dam.
The disaster that engulfs the city today is entirely man-made. More than 800,000 refugees who fled the Houthi takeover of Sanaa in September 2014 and the ensuing war have swollen the city’s population, according to the UN refugee agency.
Taking Marib or interrupting him would be a major reward for houthis. It hosts oil and gas fields that international companies, including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Total SA own them. The Marib natural gas bottling plant produces cooking gas for the nation of 29 million people. Its plant once supplies 40% of Yemen’s electricity. Marib’s modern dam is a key source of fresh water for a burned nation, although it was never fully developed even in peacetime.
When Saudi Arabia entered the Yemeni war in 2015 from its exiled government, the kingdom allied with the tribes of Marib, who had long perceived Sanaa and Houthis to look after them. Another major political power was Islah, a Sunni Islamist political party that is the Yemen branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. These disparate forces have provided a lifeline for the exiled Yemeni government, which is already facing pressure from Allied secessionists in the south.
For a while, starting in the fall of 2019, Saudi Arabia has reached a relaxation with the Houthis, said Ahmed Nagi, a non-resident expert from Yemen at Carnegie Middle East Center. Citing two Houthi officials familiar with the talks, Nagi said an agreement on the back channel saw both Saudis and rebels refraining from attacking populated areas.
But when the Houthis began to push back into Marib, the Saudis resumed an intense bombing campaign.
For houthi, “they think they win more through war than peace talks,” Nagi said. For the Saudis, “if they lose Marib, they will have zero cards on the negotiating table.”
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YEMEN TAKEN ON REGIONAL VISA
The growing conflict around Marib coincides with major changes in US war policy. President Donald Trump’s administration has declared Houthis a “foreign terrorist organization” following a Saudi campaign in support of the move.
Biden canceled the appointment of the Houthi terrorist after taking office. He also announced that the United States would stop supporting Saudi Arabia’s offensive combat operations in Yemen, saying, “This war must end.”
But fighting around Marib has intensified only as the Saudis recently offered a ceasefire agreement.. Iran’s frustration with the Biden administration’s failure to lift sanctions quickly has contributed to “intensified attacks by groups in Iraq and Yemen,” said Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi, an Iranian scholar at the Royal United Services Institute in Britain.
“Iran is trying to send a message to the United States,” Tabrizi said. “A message that the status quo is not sustainable.”
As experts debate how much control Iran has over the Houthis, the rebels are launching more and more drones loaded with bombs previously linked to Tehran in the depths of the kingdom. These attacks included a drone that crashed into a parked commercial plane and others targeting major oil installations, temporarily shaking energy prices.
“Unfortunately, the removal of the US administration of the Houthis from the list (the foreign terrorist organization) seems to have been misinterpreted by the Houthi,” the Saudi government said in a statement to the Associated Press. “This misinterpretation of the measure has led them, with the support of the Iranian regime, to increase hostilities.”
Since the war began, the Houthis have launched more than 550 bomb-laden drones and more than 350 ballistic missiles into Saudi Arabia, the kingdom said. While this caused damage, injuries and at least one death, the war in Yemen reportedly saw more than 130,000 people killed.. Saudi Arabia has been repeatedly criticized internationally for airstrikes that have killed civilians and embargoes that exacerbate hunger in a starving nation.
And although Biden has withdrawn support, US-made planes and ammunition sold to Saudi Arabia still target Yemen. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has linked the kingdom’s armaments to America, allowing the war to take place.
“I ask the Americans this question: Did you know what would happen to the Saudis the day you gave them the green light to enter the Yemeni war?” He asked Khamena in a March 21 speech. “Did you know you were sending Saudi Arabia to a swamp?”
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USA Weighs MIDEAST DEPLOYMENTS
Biden’s efforts to end US involvement in the war in Yemen come as his administration seeks to reintroduce Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers. Indirect talks began in Vienna on Tuesday.
“Iranians are eager to market their card in Yemen for something more sustainable,” said al-Iryani, a researcher at the Sanaa Center.
Such a business would suit American interests. Biden’s Defense Department seeks to redistribute troops, especially those in the Middle East, amid what experts call the “conflict of great powers” facing America with China and Russia..
The withdrawal of troops from the Middle East could strengthen the forces that America may need elsewhere. However, doing so will probably be easier said than done.
In Yemen alone, every US President since George W. Bush has launched drone strikes targeting al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, long considered by Washington to be the most dangerous branch of the militant group. Biden himself has not yet launched such a strike, although the group continues to operate in the east of the country.
US troops remain in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Meanwhile, Arab nations in the Gulf, such as Saudi Arabia, are relying on US forces stationed in their countries as a counterweight to Iran.
The US military has sent troops to Saudi Arabia in 2019, the deployment of anti-missile batteries amid tensions with Iran. However, US forces have recently reduced this presence.
“The kingdom believes that the US presence in the region can help promote the security and stability of the region by supporting allies facing transnational threats that are mainly sponsored by the Iranian regime,” the Saudi government said. He did not comment specifically on the redistributions.
Overall, U.S. forces will remain in the Middle East because it remains crucial to global energy markets and includes major bottlenecks at sea for global trade, said Aaron Stein, research director at the Philadelphia Foreign Policy Research Institute. . However, the appearance of these forces will change as the US weighs in on how to counterbalance Iran by returning to the nuclear deal, he said.
“It does not solve the Iranian problem,” Stein said. “It puts us in a place where we can manage it, as if we were in hospice care.”
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