Officials in Yemen announced an initiative to open the Sanaa–Sarwah–Marib road on 22 February.
The strategic road has been closed since 2015. It links Yemen’s capital, Sanaa – administered by the Ansarallah resistance movement – to the country’s energy-rich province of Marib, part of which is controlled by the Saudi-backed Islah Party.
The initiative aims to improve ties between Ansarallah and forces loyal to the Saudi-led coalition, as well as alleviate the suffering of citizens living under blockade.
“The initiative comes as a goodwill from the leadership of the local authority … and is a first stage that will be followed by stages to open the rest of the roads,” said Ali Muhammad Taiman, an Ansarallah-affiliated governor in one of the Marib province’s several governorates.
Sultan al-Arada, an influential tribal leader in Marib and member of the Saudi-backed Islah Party, confirmed the initiative on the same day.
“In consultation with political and military leadership, a security checkpoint was established today on the road linking Marib and Sanaa,” Arada said, adding that the initiative to open the road has been discussed with the UN. Arada expressed hope that “the other side” will take similar steps.
A local source confirmed to The Cradle that the initiative signifies the recent warming up of ties between Ansarallah and the Saudi-backed Islah Party, who were periodically at odds with one another throughout the nine years of war in the country.
“The Islah Party controls [parts of] Marib. They have become more supportive of Ansarallah. Many members of Islah previously defected [to Ansarallah]. Now, it is coming within the context of the peace deal with Saudi Arabia … The Saudis do not want to be a part of this war anymore,” the source said.
He added that Marib has become “closer” to Ansarallah and that this road-opening initiative signals increasing “closeness” between them and the Islah Party, particularly after the Gaza war – which has boosted Ansarallah’s local popularity due to its pro-Palestine naval operations in the Red Sea.
Ansarallah was close to advancing militarily in Marib toward the end of 2021. However, peace talks began not long after, which halted their offensive.
The peace agreement between Saudi Arabia and the Ansarallah-led government in Sanaa, which has been in the works for the past two years, was recently revealed as completed and ready to be signed.
Saudi Arabia has not taken part in Washington’s military campaign against Sanaa – which comes as a response to the Yemeni naval blockade on Israeli shipping in the Red Sea – so as not to compromise peace efforts.
The kingdom’s foreign minister Faisal bin Farhan announced this week that Riyadh is “fully committed” to the Saudi-Yemen peace deal, which will be “ready to sign as soon as possible.”
The road opening initiative comes as Ansarallah and the Yemeni Armed Forces’ attacks on Israeli-linked vessels and ships bound for Israeli ports are garnering significant amounts of popular support for Ansarallah in Yemen.
According to a January report by Responsible Statecraft, the Islah Party has recently been providing Ansarallah with material support and has praised its operations in support of Gaza.
Sanaa’s pro-Palestine position and subsequent popularity boost have weakened what remains of Saudi and UAE-led coalition forces in Yemen, according to Yemeni writer Mohammed Moqeibel.
Yemenis have also become more unified since the brutal US–UK military campaign that began against Yemen last month.
February 24, 2024
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, UK, United States, Yemen, Zionism |
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National security lawyers working for the Biden White House are seeking legal loopholes to justify the US war on Yemen, a new report from The New York Times (NYT) on 23 February details.
At question is the legality under US law of strikes carried out by the US Navy on Yemeni targets on three separate days starting in January and the detention of 14 Pakistani sailors the US accuses of transporting weapons to Yemen.
US involvement in Yemen began after Yemen’s Ansarallah-led government ordered its armed forces to target Israeli-linked commercial ships passing through the Bab al-Mandab Strait in the Red Sea in November.
Ansarallah is seeking to compel Israel to end its bombing campaign in Gaza, which has resulted in widespread killing and destruction. Israel has killed over 29,000 Palestinians – the majority of whom were women and children.
Rather than end its support for Israel’s campaign – which many view as genocide – the White House instead ordered the US Navy to protect Israeli ships passing through the Red Sea. This led to Yemeni forces attacking US and UK Naval ships.
The US has carried out 30 strikes in response. According to the national security lawyers, most of the strikes can be characterized as self-defense because they allegedly targeted sites from which missiles were about to be launched at US or UK ships. It has also become routine for the Navy to shoot down Yemeni attack drones in the Red Sea.
However, according to NYT, three major sets of US and UK strikes in Yemen were not in self-defense: on 11 January, 22 January, and 3 February. Those strikes were pre-emptive and targeted weapons bunkers, command hubs, and other targets, with authorization from President Joe Biden.
Because the strikes were not in self-defense, this means that the White House can engage in hostilities against Yemen for only 60 days before seeking congressional approval, per the 1973 War Powers Resolution. That 60-day clock would end on 12 March.
To continue the war on Yemen beyond that date, the White House will need to find a loophole in the resolution.
NYT writes that according to one US official, the text of the War Powers Resolution states that a president must have “introduced” US forces into conflict for the 60-day clock to apply. “It is not clear whether the law would apply to a situation in which the Navy was already in the Red Sea before hostilities arose, the official said.”
The White House also argues, in a contradictory fashion, that the strikes on Yemen are both too frequent to constitute being at war with Yemen and not frequent enough.
The US official said the strikes on Yemen “have been brief and infrequent, raising the possibility that they are too intermittent for the clock to apply.”
The same official at the same time pointed to operations “in which combat was more frequent or posed a greater threat to American forces,” which might provide a precedent for the current war on Yemen. These include the use of US Navy escorts for oil tankers in the Persian Gulf in 1987 under president Ronald Reagan, in which 37 Navy sailors were killed, as well as US strikes in Libya in 2011 under president Barack Obama to topple the government of Muammar Qaddafi. Congress did not approve the military operations in either case.
According to Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor and former head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the George W. Bush administration, “The lawyers are taking advantage of a famously loophole-filled statute,” he said.
“The executive branch has been exploiting those loopholes for almost 50 years, creating many supporting precedents, and Congress has not stood on its prerogative to do anything about it.”
February 23, 2024
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Militarism, Wars for Israel | United States, Yemen |
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The United States and Britain have conducted fresh aerial assaults on Yemen’s strategic western province of Hudaydah.
The al-Masirah television network reported three airstrikes on Ras Issa area in Hudaydah’s a-Salif district late on Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, it added, four similar air raids also targeted al-Jabana and al-Arj areas in Hudaydah.
Meanwhile, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement that its forces had carried out four strikes on areas in Yemen, targeting “seven mobile anti-ship cruise missiles and one anti-ship ballistic missile launcher” in the act of aggression.
It claimed that the targets “presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and to the US Navy ships in the region.”
CENTCOM also said that its forces had shot down a “one-way attack unmanned aircraft system.”
In recent months, the US and its allies have launched illegal attacks on Yemen amid their frustration in the face of an anti-Israel maritime campaign by the Yemeni armed forces.
Israel waged a US-backed genocidal war on the besieged Gaza Strip on October 7 following a historic operation by the Palestinian Hamas resistance group against the occupying regime.
In support of Gaza, Yemeni armed forces have targeted ships going to and from ports in the occupied territories, or whose owners are linked to Israel, in the southern Red Sea, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the Gulf of Aden, and even in the Arabian Sea.
The US-led attacks on Yemen prompted the country’s military to declare American and British vessels to be legitimate targets.
February 22, 2024
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | Israel, Palestine, UK, United States, Yemen, Zionism |
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Yemeni authorities have held “constructive talks” with the representatives of the European Union (EU) to ensure the safety of shipping in the Red Sea, Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein al-Ezzi says.
The Yemeni minister said on Wednesday that his country had ensured EU authorities during bilateral talks that the Red Sea is safe for international transit.
“We once again reiterate that the Red Sea is absolutely safe. Only passage to ships linked to three parties, namely the US, Israel and Britain, are blocked,” al-Ezzi was quoted as saying by Yemen’s al-Masirah TV channel.
Yemeni forces started carrying out attacks on Israeli-linked ships weeks after the regime launched the bloody hostilities in the besieged Gaza Strip in early October.
The strikes later expanded to target ships linked to the United States and Britain. The two countries have carried out airstrikes and naval attacks on Yemen’s territory in the recent past.
Yemen’s Ansarullah movement says attacks on ships will continue until Israel ends the campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 29,000 people since early October.
The Yemenis have sought to ensure international shipping companies that their vessels can safely sail in three major regional waterways of the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandab Strait and the Gulf of Aden if they have no connection to Israel, the US or Britain.
Ezzi said some 283 commercial ships had sailed in the Red Sea with complete safety this week despite claims by Washington that the waterway is not safe for commercial shipping.
“Unfortunately, shipping companies have been deceived by the US propaganda and reduced passage through the Red Sea because of US efforts to militarize the region,” he said.
February 21, 2024
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | European Union, Israel, Palestine, UK, United States, Yemen |
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The Yemeni armed forces announced on 19 February a new attack on a British commercial vessel in the Gulf of Aden, adding that the ship was nearly destroyed.
“The naval forces of the Yemeni Armed Forces … carried out an effective military operation, targeting a British ship in the Gulf of Aden, RUBYMAR, with several naval missiles,” Yemeni army spokesman Yahya Saree said in a statement.
“The ship was seriously damaged, causing it to stop completely. As a result of the extensive damage the ship suffered, it is now at risk of sinking in the Gulf of Aden. We ensured the ship’s crew exited safely during the operation,” Saree added.
UK maritime authorities said an investigation was launched following reports of an explosion near a British cargo ship on Sunday.
The Yemeni spokesman added that air defenses also brought down a US MQ-9 drone “while it was carrying out hostile missions against our country on behalf of the Zionist entity.”
This was the third UK vessel that Yemen has struck in the last four days. The Yemeni army announced on 17 February an attack on the British oil vessel, the POLLUX, in the Red Sea. This came two days after an attack on the UK ship LYCAVITOS.
Since the US and UK launched a violent airstrike campaign against Yemen last month, Sanaa has attacked several US and British vessels in the Red Sea and elsewhere.
CENTCOM announced “five self-defense strikes” on what it said were Yemeni cruise missiles on Saturday.
Nevertheless, these strikes have done little to deter Yemen from continuing operations against Israeli-linked ships.
The Yemeni attacks have dealt a significant blow to the Israeli economy and western shipping as a whole. Several major shipping companies were forced to suspend journeys in the Red Sea and make lengthy and expensive reroutes.
Yemeni naval operations “will not stop until the aggression ends and the siege on the Gaza Strip is lifted,” Saree confirmed in Monday’s statement.
The Sanaa government’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Hussein al-Ezzi, warned on 16 February that Washington “will soon” regret its escalation against Yemen.
February 19, 2024
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The US-led strikes against targets in Yemen are illegitimate and have no justification under the UN Charter, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev said on Friday at a meeting of security officials from regional powers.
The US and UK, with support from allies, have launched dozens of attacks since January against the Houthis, a Yemeni armed movement. The stated intention was to protect maritime traffic from the militants, who have targeted trade vessels with raids and drone strikes in an attempt to put pressure on Israel.
”Washington and London have unleashed a war with Yemen under the pretext of securing freedom of navigation in the Red Sea. They are trying to drag other nations of the region into it,” Patrushev said. “However, their strikes on the positions of the Houthis are absolutely illegitimate and have nothing to do with the right of self-defense… contrary to what Washington claims.”
The Houthis were a major party in the civil war in Yemen and the primary opponents of the Saudi-led military intervention launched in 2015. They have emerged from the conflicts as the de-facto government of a large portion of the country.
Houthi forces have been targeting passing ships they believe to have ties with Israel in an attempt to enforce a naval blockade of the Jewish state – in retaliation for Israel’s siege of Gaza, which West Jerusalem has conducted with the stated goal of obliterating the Palestinian militant movement Hamas.
Tensions are on the rise globally, Patrushev said, claiming that the core reason for the violence is “the Western intention to hold on to its dominance in world affairs at all cost.”
“People in Washington are convinced that doing so would be easiest amid a global chaos,” he added.
Patrushev delivered the report to his counterparts from China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. The event’s main focus was on the situation in Afghanistan.
February 16, 2024
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Russia, United States, Yemen, Zionism |
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The U.S. is edging closer to war with Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces, a state security agency composed of armed groups, some of which are close to Iran, but which for the main are Iraqi nationalists. The U.S. carried out a drone strike in Baghdad, Wednesday that killed three members of the Kataeb Hizbullah forces, including a senior commander. One of the assassinated, al-Saadi, is the most senior figure to have been assassinated in Iraq since the 2020 drone strike that killed senior Iraqi Commander al-Muhandis and Qassem Soleimani.
The target is puzzling as Kataeb more than a week ago suspended its military operations against the U.S. (at the request of the Iraqi government). The stand down was widely published. So why was this senior figure assassinated?
Tectonic twitches often are sparked by a single egregious action: the one final grain of sand which – on top of the others – triggers the slide, capsizing the sandpile. Iraqis are angry. They feel that the U.S. wantonly violates their sovereignty – showing contempt and disdain for Iraq, a once great civilisation, now brought low in the wake of U.S. wars. Swift and collective retaliation has been promised.
One act, and a gyre can begin. The Iraqi government may not be able to hold the line.
The U.S. tries to separate and compartmentalise issues: AnsarAllah’s Red Sea blockade is ‘one thing’; attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, an unrelated ‘another’. But all know that such separateness is artificial – the ‘red’ thread woven through all these ‘issues’ is Gaza. The White House (and Israel) however, insists the connecting thread instead to be Iran.
Did the White House think this through properly, or was its latest assassination viewed as a ‘sacrifice’ to appease the ‘gods of war’ in the Beltway, clamouring to bomb Iran?
Whatever the motive, the Gyre turns. Other dynamics are running that will be fuelled by the attack.
The Cradle highlights one significant shift:
“by successfully obstructing Israeli vessels from traversing the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the Ansarallah-led Sanaa government has emerged as a powerful symbol of resistance in defence of the Palestinian people – a cause deeply popular across Yemen’s many demographics. Sanaa’s position stands in stark contrast to that of the Saudi and Emirati-backed government in Aden, which, to the horror of Yemenis, welcomed attacks by U.S. and British forces on 12 January”.
“The U.S.–UK airstrikes have prompted some heavyweight internal defections … a number of Yemeni militias previously aligned with the UAE and Saudi Arabia, consequently switched allegiance to Ansarallah … Disillusionment with the coalition will have profound political and military implications for Yemen, reshaping alliances, and casting the UAE and Saudi Arabia as national adversaries. Palestine continues to serve as a revealing litmus test throughout West Asia – and now in Yemen too – exposing those who only-rhetorically claim the mantle of justice and Arab solidarity”.
Yemen military defections – How does this matter?
Well, the Houthis and AnsarAllah have become heroes across the Islamic World. Look at social media. The Houthis are now the ‘stuff of myth’: Standing up for Palestinians whilst others don’t. A following is taking hold. AnsarAllah’s ‘heroic’ stance may lead to the ousting of western proxies, and so to dominate that ‘rest of Yemen’ they presently do not control. It seizes too, the Islamic world’s imagination (to the concern of the Arab Establishment).
In the immediate aftermath of the assassination of al-Saadi, Iraqis took to the streets of Baghdad chanting: “God is Great, America is the Great Satan”.
Do not imagine this ‘turn’ is lost on others – on the Iraqi Hashd al-Sha’abi, for example; or on the (Palestinians) of Jordan; or on the mass foot-soldiers of the Egyptian army; or indeed in the Gulf. There are 5 billion smartphones extant today. The ruling class do watch the Arabic channels, and view (nervously) social media. They worry that anger against the western flouting of international law may boil over, and they will be unable to contain it: What price the ‘Rules Order’ now since the International Court of Justice upended the notion of a moral content to western culture?
The wrongheadedness of U.S. policy is astonishing – and now has claimed the most central tenet in the ‘Biden strategy’ for resolving the crisis in Gaza. The ‘dangle’ of Saudi normalisation with Israel was viewed in the West as the pivot – around which Netanyahu would either be forced to give up on his maximalist security control from the River to the Sea mantra, or see himself pushed aside by a rival for whom the ‘normalisation bait’ held the allure of likely victory in the next Israeli elections.
Biden’s spokesperson was flagrant in this respect:
“[We] … are having discussions with Israel and Saudi Arabia … about trying to move forward with a normalization arrangement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. So those discussions are ongoing as well. We certainly received positive feedback from both sides that they’re willing to continue to have those discussions”.
The Saudi Government – possibly angry at the U.S. recourse to such deceptive language – duly kicked the plank out from beneath the Biden platform: It issued a written statement confirming unequivocally that: “there will be no diplomatic relations with Israel unless an independent Palestinian state is recognized on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and that the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip stops – and all Israeli occupation forces are withdraw from the Gaza Strip”. The Kingdom stands by the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, in other words.
Of course, no Israeli could campaign on that platform in Israeli elections!
Recall how Tom Friedman set out how the ‘Biden Doctrine’ was supposed to fit together as a interlinked whole: First, through taking a “strong and resolute stand on Iran” the U.S. would signal to “our Arab and Muslim allies, that it needs to take on Iran in a more aggressive manner … that we can no longer allow Iran to try to drive us out of the region; Israel into extinction and our Arab allies into intimidation by acting through proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Shiite militias in Iraq — while Tehran blithely sits back and pays no price”.
The second strand was the Saudi dangle that would inevitably pave the path into the (third) element which was the “building of a credible legitimate Palestinian Authority as … a good neighbour to Israel …”. This “bold U.S. commitment to a Palestinian state would give us [Team Biden] legitimacy to act against Iran”, Friedman foresaw.
Let us be plain: this trifecta of policies, rather than gel into a single doctrine, are falling like dominoes. Their collapse owes to one thing: The original decision to back Israel’s use of overwhelming violence across Gaza’s civil society – ostensibly to defeat Hamas. It has turned the region and much of the World against the U.S. and Europe.
How did this happen? Because nothing changed by way of U.S. policies. It was the same old western bromides from decades ago: financial threats, bombing and violence. And the insistence on one mandatory ‘stand with Israel’ narrative (with no discussion).
The rest of the world has grown tired of it; even defiant towards it.
So to put it bluntly: Israel has now come face-to-face with the (self-destructive) inconsistency within Zionism: How to maintain special rights for Jews on territory in which there is an approximately equal number of non-Jews? The old answer has been discredited.
The Israeli Right argues that Israel then must go for broke: All or nothing. Take the risk of wider war (in which Israel, may or may not, be ‘victorious’); tell Arabs to move elsewhere; or abandon Zionism and themselves move on.
The Biden Administration, rather than help Israel look truth in the eye, has discarded the task of obliging Israel to face up to the contradictions in Zionism, in favour of restoring the broken status quo ante. Some 75 years after the founding of the Israeli state, as former Israeli negotiator, Daniel Levy, has. noted:
‘[We are back to] “the “banal debate” between the U.S. and Israel over “whether the bantustan shall be repackaged and marketed as a ‘state’”.
Could it have been different? Probably not. The reaction comes from deep in Biden’s nature.
The trifecta of U.S. failed responses paradoxically has nonetheless facilitated Israel’s slide to the Right (as evidenced by all recent polling). And has – absent a hostage deal; absent a Saudi credible ‘dangle’; or any credible path to a Palestinian State – precisely opened the path for the Netanyahu government to pursue his maximalist exit from collapsed deterrence through securing a ‘grand victory’ over the Palestinian resistance, Hizbullah, and even – he hopes – Iran.
None of these objectives can be achieved without U.S. help. Yet, where is Biden’s limit: Support for Israel in a Hizbullah war? And were it to widen, support for Israel in an Iran war too? Where is the limit?
The incongruity, coming as it does, at a moment when the West’s Ukraine Project is imploding, suggests that Biden may see himself needing some ‘grand victory’, as much as does Netanyahu.
February 12, 2024
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | Iraq, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Yemen, Zionism |
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The German government on 8 February dispatched the frigate Hesse from its North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven to the Red Sea, where it will join an EU naval mission in support of Israeli commercial interests.
“Free sea trade routes are the basis of our industry and of our capability to defend ourselves,” the chief of the German navy, Vice Admiral Jan Christian Kaack, told reporters in Berlin.
The Hesse air defense frigate is equipped with radars that can detect targets at a range of up to 400 km and missiles capable of countering ballistic missiles and drones at a range of more than 160 km.
EU foreign ministers are expected to approve the mission officially, codenamed “Aspides,” in mid-February.
In addition to Germany, France, Italy, and Greece have also expressed interest in joining the planned EU mission. According to the plans established by Brussels, the mission is expected to repel attacks but not attack Yemeni targets on land.
Brussels’ entry into the US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian (OPG) became a significant point of contention among several EU states last year, particularly Spain, which vetoed the participation of EU naval forces in the coalition in December.
The Yemeni armed forces have conducted dozens of attacks on US, UK, and Israeli-linked vessels trying to transit the Bab al-Mandab Strait since mid-November. Sanaa maintains that the operations seek to pressure the west into stopping the Israeli genocide in Gaza, and have repeatedly pledged to stop the attacks once the siege of Gaza is lifted.
The US and the UK have launched over a dozen air raids across Yemen since mid-January in an attempt to deter Sanaa’s pro-Palestine actions. However, Yemeni authorities say they have no intent to scale back the campaign.
On Sunday, Ansarallah spokesman Muhammad Abdul Salam stressed that the western strategy will “not achieve any goal … but rather increase their dilemmas” in the region.
“Yemen’s decision to support Gaza is firm and honorable and will not be affected by any attack. [Our military capabilities] are not easy to destroy and have been rebuilt during years of harsh war,” the official said via social media, adding that Washington and London “should submit to international public opinion, which demands an immediate halt to the Israeli aggression [in Gaza].”
February 8, 2024
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Militarism, Wars for Israel | European Union, Germany, Israel, Palestine, Yemen, Zionism |
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US and UK warships and fighter jets bombed Yemen on 4 February, in a wave of missile strikes US officials claim hit 36 targets.
The US said in a CENTCOM statement that it hit “36 targets at 13 locations,” striking “underground storage facilities, command and control, missile systems, UAV storage and operations sites, radars, and helicopters.”
According to the statement, the US, UK, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and New Zealand took part in the attacks.
The strikes were in response to Yemeni efforts to target Israeli-linked commercial ships passing through the narrow Bab al-Mandab Strait in the Red Sea. The Yemeni attacks are in response to Israel’s genocidal bombing campaign in Gaza.
Rather than press its ally Israel to stop its military campaign, which has killed over 27,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children, the US has joined forces with the UK to bomb Yemen.
Saturday’s strikes were launched by US F/A-18 fighter jets from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier, British Typhoon FGR4 fighter aircraft, and the Navy destroyers USS Gravely and the USS Carney firing Tomahawk missiles from the Red Sea, according to US officials and the UK Defense Ministry.
The Yemen Armed Forces issued a statement detailing where the attacks took place, reporting 13 raids on Sanaa, 9 on Hodeidah, 11 on Taiz, 7 on Al-Bayda, 7 on Hajjah, and one on Saada.
“These attacks will not deter us from our moral, religious, and humanitarian stance in support of the steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, and will not go unanswered and punished,” read the statement.
The strikes come one day after the US sent B-1 bombers to target 85 locations affiliated with the Islamic Resistance of Iraq in eastern Syria and western Iraq, killing at least 16. This was in response to an operation by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq that targeted US military outpost Tower 22 in Jordan last week, killing three US soldiers.
US officials reportedly told Al-Jazeera that the strikes on Yemen are “considered a next round of retaliation for the killing of the [US] soldiers in Jordan.”
Like Ansarallah, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq coalition, formed after 7 October, has also targeted Israel, as well as US bases in Syria and Iraq. The groups say their attacks are in response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which the US has supported militarily and diplomatically.
Ansarallah leaders in Yemen say they have no intention of scaling back their campaign despite pressure from the US and UK bombing.
Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, an Ansarallah official, said, “military operations against Israel will continue until the crimes of genocide in Gaza are stopped and the siege on its residents is lifted, no matter the sacrifices it costs us.” He wrote on social media that the “American-British aggression against Yemen will not go unanswered, and we will meet escalation with escalation.”
February 4, 2024
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, Gaza, Israel, New Zealand, Palestine, The Netherlands, UK, United States, Yemen, Zionism |
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Iraqi anti-terror group Kata’ib Hezbollah has roundly denounced the latest US military airstrikes against several sites used by resistance groups in the country, stating that the attacks emanate from the US administration’s criminal mindset and its craving for more bloodshed.
“We extend our condolences to our proud and steadfast nation for the martyrdom of several compatriots, who were targeted while protecting the homeland against the evils of American forces and the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group,” it said in a statement.
It added that criminality is deeply ingrained in the mindset of American politicians, and they long for relentless bloodletting as well as starvation and massacre of ordinary people in pursuit of their interests and advancement of their malicious agendas.
“US officials do not shy away from the occupation of other countries, plundering others’ national assets, influencing their decision-making and their humiliation.
“Under the American mindset, the first solution is murder. Such an attitude has historically been responsible for the extensive destruction of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is now behind the deadly attacks against sites in al-Qa’im,” Kata’ib Hezbollah pointed out.
Separately, the Yemeni Ansarullah resistance movement censured the US aggression against areas in Iraq and neighboring Syria, terming them as barbaric, in breach of international law, and a serious violation of the two countries’ sovereignty.
“The aggression falls within the context of US support for the Zionist enemy as it continues its crimes against the Palestinian population of Gaza,” it added.
Ansarullah warned that US moves will drag the entire region into a more complex conflict, and will jeopardize international peace and security.
“Washington could have compelled the Tel Aviv regime to halt its aggression on Palestinians and lift the siege on Gaza. It, however, decided to target the countries and nations of the region.
“We reiterate that Muslim nations reserve the right to defend themselves and protect their security and sovereignty against repeated US acts of aggression,” the Yemeni movement underscored.
US Central Command (CENTCOM) said its military forces struck more than 85 targets in Iraq and Syria “with numerous aircraft to include long-range bombers flown from the United States”.
“The air strikes employed more than 125 precision munitions,” it added in a statement.
US President Joe Biden said in a statement on Friday that the strikes were the first in a series of actions by Washington in response to a drone attack that killed a number of soldiers at a remote US base in Jordan.
“Our response began today,” Biden said. “It will continue at times and places of our choosing,” he stated.
Three US soldiers were killed and about 40 others injured in the assault on the military base known as Tower 22 near the Jordan-Syria border on Sunday.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of anti-terror fighters, in a statement published on its Telegram channel claimed responsibility for the drone strike.
In retaliation for the flurry of US aerial assaults on several locations in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq announced that it had conducted missile strikes against the Ain al-Asad Airbase, housing US occupation forces in the western Iraqi province of al-Anbar.
The group also said it had staged missile and drone strikes against the strategic al-Tanf military base in southeastern Syria near the border with Jordan and Iraq, as well as the al-Khadra Village in Syria’s northeastern province of al-Hasakah.
February 4, 2024
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Gaza, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Syria, United States, Yemen |
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Attacking Iran would be a catastrophic mistake for Washington, as the US is too internally weak to wage a new major in the Middle East, University of Tehran professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi told Sputnik’s New Rules podcast.
US officials have reportedly signaled that plans have been approved for a series of strikes against targets in Iraq and Syria.
That would be in response to a recent drone attack on US personnel in the Middle East — which claimed the lives of three soldiers and left 34 wounded.
In the wake of the strike Bloomberg claimed the Biden administration was considering a covert strike on Iran or Iranian officials as possible options.
But University of Tehran Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi told Sputnik that directly targeting Iran would be a major mistake and a major miscalculation by Washington.
He suggested that scenario was very unlikely, given Iran’s missile defense and drone capabilities, as well as the vulnerability of US bases which are scattered across the Middle Eastern region.
“Let’s assume that the United States strikes Iran,” Marandi said. “The United States has bases all across the Persian Gulf. The Iranians will hit out at those bases, and then the Iranians will also punish those countries that host those bases.”
Message for Joe Biden: Don’t Mess with Iran
The professor warned the fallout from the tit-for-tat attacks would send oil and gas prices “through the roof.”
“The Red sea would no longer be safe for oil and gas. The Western economies would collapse if there was a major escalation in our region,” Marandi underlined. “The United States, its assets across Iraq would be crushed. It would be overrun and by extension Syria as well and Lebanon. The world has changed. This is not just Iran, by the way. This is the whole of West Asia.”
Given the latest US media reports, it appears far more plausible that the US would attack targets in Iraq and Syria, Marandi continued.
“[The US] will claim some sort of ‘victory over terrorists’ and that sort of nonsense which they usually say,” the professor said. “But it will be like in Yemen, they will have very little impact because the resistance to the US occupation, the illegal occupation in Iraq and Syria is very well hidden. Their assets are underground, they are spread out. And all the United States would do would be to make people angrier and make the resistance more popular, both at home and abroad. That’s exactly what we saw in Yemen.”
Marandi noted that most recently instead of pushing the Israeli regime to end the slaughter in the Palestinian Gaza Strip, the US tried to facilitate the genocide by attacking Yemen. Since early January the US and its allies conducted a series of strikes against the Ansar Allah-led government in the Yemeni capital Sana’a, also known as the Houthis after their leader.
“They launched many missiles, wasted a lot of money, but they were incapable of changing the balance of power. And Yemen continues to easily strike ships. Why?” the professor asked. “Because all of their assets are underground. Their mobile radar is well-protected underground. They are missiles and drones are well protected underground. They come out, strike the target and go back underground. So the Americans failed in Yemen. They made ‘Ansar Allah,’ or what the West likes to call the Houthis, very popular across the region and across the world, and they’ll only do the same in Iraq and Syria.”
In the aftermath of the strikes the Biden administrations came under criticism from both Republicans and Democrats. A bipartisan group of House representatives, comprising such strange bedfellows as Republican Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green and New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, argued that the US’ “unauthorized strikes in Yemen” violate the Constitution and US statute.
They called on Biden “to seek authorization from Congress before involving the US in another conflict in the Middle East,” and warned the White House against provoking Iran and Iran-backed militia in the region which could swiftly spiral out of control and lead to a broader regional conflict.
US legislators’ concerns are justified as the US cannot afford to wage wars on multiple fronts, the academic pointed out.
“The United States cannot win another war,” said Marandi. “I have no doubt that if the Republicans were in charge, they would be… Whoever is in the white House, the people around him would be saying these things in private, and the Democrats in public would be denouncing the president for holding back. But the truth is that the United States is not the United States of the past. They can launch an attack on Iran. But the price would be extremely high and the United States wouldn’t win.”
Marandi questioned when the US had last won an overseas war.
“As the United States ‘won’ in Iraq as it won in Afghanistan. Did it win in Libya? Did it win in the genocide that it supported in Yemen? Did it win in Ukraine? The United States has a very poor record when it comes to launching wars and destroying nations and countries,” the acdemic said.
“They are capable of ruining lives and murdering millions and they don’t care. We see that in Gaza every day, but they simply don’t have the power to win. And Iran is not Iraq. Iran is not Libya. Iran is not Yemen. Iran is not Vietnam,” Marandi stressed. “Attacking Iran would be a catastrophic mistake for the United States, and something that I don’t think those decision makers in Washington would ever seriously contemplate.”
“The Americans may be foolish enough to do so, but if they do so, then I think you’ll see the demise of the American empire take place much more rapidly than we’re seeing right now,” he concluded.
February 2, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | Iran, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Yemen, Zionism |
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When it comes to explaining this question, i.e., why the US is attacking the Houthis in the Red Sea, most mainstream western media gives a similar answer, i.e., the Houthis are part of Iran’s “axis of resistance”; the Houthis seek Israel’s destruction; the Houthis are a terrorist group seeking to bring Yemen under their exclusive control, etc. Almost every major western media outlet has singularly highlighted what they call is the central Houthi slogan: “Death to America, Death to Israel, curse the Jews and victory to Islam”. The purpose is to criminalize them. Therefore, retaliating against them is crucial for the West to ensure its own security. But the US and its allies also need to frame it in a way that can get maximum political sympathy from within their countries. Speaking to reporters in Bahrain on the 10th of January, the US Secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken, warned that continued Houthi attacks in the Red Sea could disrupt supply chains and in turn increase costs for everyday goods.
This particular framing of US counterattacks has direct appeal to the people, i.e., if the Houthis continue to attack ships in the Red Sea, it will disturb global supply chains, which will lead to the shortage of commodities, including food, that might contribute to inflation, making ordinary people’s lives difficult. Therefore, to ensure that people face minimum difficulties, the US is attacking the Houthis.
Contrast it with the fact that the Houthis’ target in the Red Sea are the Israel-bound shipments. But the West suppresses this reality. It is not untrue that the Houthis are against Israel and that the core purpose of their attacks is to dent Israel’s ability to wage its war. The US, on the other hand, has jumped on the anti-Houthi bandwagon to take care of the threat that the Houthis present to Israel so that the state of Israel can continue, safely, to wage its war on the Gazans.
But this is not how the US frames its attacks. The US-led task force called Operation Prosperity Guardian has been patrolling the Red Sea to, in Blinken’s words, “preserve freedom of navigation” and “freedom of shipping”. But the only freedom Washington cares about is its own ability to dictate geopolitics in its own exclusive ways; hence, the attacks. Still, if Washington and its allies see the Houthis as part of the “axis of resistance”, for the Houthis, for Iran, and for the people of Palestine, the “axis of resistance” exists, fundamentally, due to the ‘axis of domination’ the US wants to accomplish. For the Houthis and its allies, this ‘axis of domination’ includes the US and its NATO allies plus Israel and the West’s reluctant allies in the Middle East, i.e., states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
What the Houthis Say
For the Houthis, the main reason for their attacks is the collective inability or the unwillingness of the West to prevent the unimaginable loss of life at the hands of Israel in Palestine. A senior Houthi official said, in a statement released on ‘X’ (Twitter), in December that the Houthis would only halt their attacks if Israel’s “crimes in Gaza stop and food, medicines and fuel are allowed to reach its besieged population”. Later, in response to the US decision to launch a coalition force in the Red Sea, Houthi Major General Yusuf al-Madani said in a statement that “Any escalation in Gaza is an escalation in the Red Sea … Any country or party that comes between us and Palestine, we will confront it.”
The question, therefore, is: will the Houthis still be attacking if the West was playing a more responsible role, i.e., not allowing Israel to execute its own version of the so-called final solution to the Palestine question. The answer is probably no. But if this was not the case, i.e., if there was no crisis in the Red Sea, the US would have little excuse to launch a coalition and use the war to augment its dwindling position in the Middle East.
The Coalition
The US-led coalition is the US entry point in what the US calculates could be a long war in the region, a war that would become long only because Israel needs a lot of time to execute its cardinal objectives. Apparently, Israel’s objective is eliminating Hamas. But, as the war has progressed and its current trajectory, i.e., the utter destruction of the entire Gaza and the displacement of millions of Gazans, shows, Israel’s objective is to fundamentally change the socio-political reality of the Gaza Strip in a way that would allow it to permanently annex this region in its pursuit of ‘Greater Israel’.
Israel confirmed earlier this month that the war is unlikely to come to an end in 2024. The West, in response to this warning, has practically sealed its lips. On the contrary, the Houthi attacks have allowed the West to practically shift the blame on them for creating tensions. This is a classic western way of giving spins to issues in a way that a) not only allow it to execute its plans and b) frames them in a way that minimizes the political risk.
For Biden, it is important to minimize the political risk now more than ever because of the seemingly unstoppable Trump resurgence. If Trump wins the next election in the US, it does not mean an end to the US support for Israel. It might increase, given that the Trump administration, by accepting Israel’s decision to declare Jerusalem as its capital and supporting the Abraham Accords, directly contributed to the present war. But for Biden, this is still a political nightmare. Therefore, the Biden administration is excessively framing the issue as existential not only for Israel but also for the US. This makes a lot of sense for him for the elections, given that Biden’s unflinching support for Israel and his willingness to expand US involvement in favor of Israel has led to nearly three-quarters of Jewish Americans [grossly over-represented in campaign finance and media control] approving his policies. Biden’s domestic imperatives in this sense trump the imperative of saving innocent lives and preventing the war from spreading. It is for this reason that Washington is attacking the Houthis.
Salman Rafi Sheikh is a research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs.
February 2, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | Israel, Palestine, United States, Yemen, Zionism |
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