Juan Cole Informed Comment
Drones and missiles hit Saudi Arabia from the Helpers of God (Ansarullah) government of northern Yemen again on Wednesday. They slammed into the King Fahd Airport at Dammam in eastern Saudi Arabia, killing one person and injuring eight, some critically. A drone aimed at Aramco’s Shaybah oilfield was intercepted, but interception often means it is knocked down before it can reach its target, falling onto buildings or people on its trajectory, so it still killed two people.
Last week, the Houthis hit Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport, closing it until Wednesday when it partially reopened.
The inadequacy of Saudi anti-missile defense appears to have raised alarms in Washington, which ordered non-emergency personnel and dependents to leave the U.S. embassy in Riyadh. Iran had successfully targeted that embassy last spring, damaging the part of the building used by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The Helpers of God, led by the Houthi clan, were intensively bombed by Saudi Arabia and the United States during the 2015-2022 war on them, and Sanaa International Airport and Hodeida Port were frequent targets. Now that their military engineers have developed sophisticated missile and drone capabilities, they seem interested in giving Saudi Arabia a taste of its own medicine. That they should try to hit the U.S. embassy cannot be ruled out. Both the Saudi and the U.S. posture has been much weakened by the failed war on Iran, in which the vulnerability of US bases and facilities was demonstrated, and in which key Saudi energy and other installations were struck.
The Saudis also accused the Houthis of targeting the holy city of Medina in the Hijaz with drones, but Sanaa denied this charge.
On Tuesday, a Houthi ballistic missile struck a training center for security personnel of the Saudi-backed government of Rashad al-Alimi in Shabwa province, Yemen, killing 75. The scale of the death toll and the precision of the strike may have been among the considerations that led the State Department to begin withdrawing personnel from Riyadh, which has also been repeatedly targeted this month by the Helpers of God in Yemen.
The Helpers of God fired a ballistic missile at a military base near Aden belonging to the small nationalist government of Yemen based in that southern city. The Helpers of God or Houthis rule some 80% of the Yemeni population but do not control the thinly populated, rugged south, which is analogous to Wyoming in the U.S. Southern Yemen is dominated by the al-Alimi government.
ACLED reports that the Helpers of God fired missiles at the Riyan Airport at Mukalla and at Aden International Airport near the southern port city.
Helpers of God land troops continue to besiege the southwestern city of Taiz, population about 1 million, one of the last big population centers not under their control. The Ansarullah troops have surrounded the city and cut it off from supplies, so that food and water are becoming scarce. The intense fighting over Taiz by the two governments of Yemen, those of Abdulmalik al-Houthi and Rashad al-Alimi, has displaced some 200,000 people and created a severe humanitarian crisis.
Photo of Kingdom Center, Riyadh, by Oualid Lakhrouti on Unsplash
If Taiz falls to the Houthis, which some observers think is possible, there would be nothing in the way of their advance on the key port of Aden on the southern coast. They’d then have like 95% of Yemen’s population under their rule, leaving only Yemen’s southern “Wyoming,” where few people live under the control of the Saudi-backed government.
The struggle has been costly. Some 18 million Yemenis out of a total population of 43 million face food insecurity because of the long-term civil war between the Zaidi Shia Houthis and the Sunni government of al-Alimi. Since many Sunni tribes have allied with the Houthis, the struggle isn’t properly characterized as a Sunni-Shiite one, however.
Juan Cole’s Informed Comment delivers independent, expert analysis of war, the Middle East, climate change, and U.S. foreign policy. Help sustain this work
Editor’s Note: At a moment when the once vaunted model of responsible journalism is overwhelmingly the play thing of self-serving billionaires and their corporate scribes, alternatives of integrity are desperately needed, and ScheerPost is one of them. Please support our independent journalism by contributing to our online donation platform, Network for Good, or send a check to our new PO Box. We can’t thank you enough, and promise to keep bringing you this kind of vital news.
You can also make a donation to our PayPal or subscribe to our Patreon.