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If the US launches a ground operation against Yemen, it will backfire

By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | April 21, 2025

Frustrated by its costly ongoing offensive campaign against Yemen, the Trump administration is said to be in talks to launch a ground effort aimed at seizing the strategic port city of Hodeidah, before effecting regime change in Sanaa. If this offensive does occur, it will result in a disastrous defeat for Washington.

In 2015, when then-US President Barack Obama backed the Saudi-led coalition’s war on Yemen, Riyadh had estimated that it would only take a few months to uproot the Ansar Allah leadership that had taken over Sanaa. Instead, they faced defeat after defeat at the hands of a highly-motivated armed force that received the backing of the majority of Yemen’s Armed Forces.

A decade later, despite the 2022 ceasefire, the conflict remains unresolved – and Ansar Allah’s power has only continued to grow. The movement that once seized control of Sanaa with the backing of key elements of the existing power structure, including segments of the military, was a shadow of what it has since become. Not only has it forged strong alliances with various tribal factions across Yemen, but it has also made leaps and bounds in developing both offensive and defensive weapons technologies.

The Yemeni Armed Forces that aligned with the Ansar Allah-led government proved capable of holding off the combined power of the Saudi-backed and UAE-backed Yemeni forces, in addition to various militant groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS, also battling Saudi Arabia’s armed forces and later mercenary fighters from Sudan and elsewhere. They fought on the ground for years, amidst a US-Saudi blockade in the Red Sea, combined with US-British-Israeli logistical support being provided to their enemies, backing Riyadh’s air attacks against the country.

While managing to inflict countless defeats on what was supposed to be a militarily superior opposition – on paper – the Yemeni government in Sanaa continued to expand its power and territorial control in a country that has historically been divided between north and south.

In late 2021, game changing technological advances introduced a new dynamic to the conflict, ultimately pressuring the Saudi-led coalition to accept a UN mediated ceasefire proposal. By early 2022, after an expansion of the ground war the previous year, the Yemeni Armed Forces had launched a wave of successful drone and missile attacks at targets across the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia.

While Riyadh had been dealing with Ansar Allah’s drones and missiles for years by that point, it was clear that a significant technological advancement had occurred. And whereas the Saudi State had some capacity to absorb limited attacks on its vital infrastructure, the Emirati regime was far less equipped to withstand repeated blows from Yemen.

Abu Dhabi in particular cannot afford to absorb sustained waves of drone and missile attacks, especially if Dubai becomes a target. Unlike Saudi Arabia, the UAE is a tiny and vulnerable country. If Yemen decides to blanket them with strikes, their endeavors to diversify their economy will likely disintegrate, and no amount of deals with the US nor the Israelis can help them.

The claims that are being spread, particularly across Arabic language media, speculate that a Saudi-UAE backed force of about 80,000 soldiers is being amassed in order to launch an offensive aimed at seizing Hodeidah. Then, so goes the report, the US will offer air support and even launch a smaller ground attack to invade Yemen.

Donald Trump’s Vietnam?

Yemen was once dubbed Egypt’s Vietnam – and if the United States decides to launch a ground campaign there, the outcome is unlikely to align with President Donald Trump’s intentions. Already, the air campaign alone, which has to date killed around 150 civilians, has proven to be an embarrassing failure, costing US taxpayers billions of dollars with little to show in return.

Despite this war of aggression against Yemen being launched without a popular mandate, nor congressional approval, the US corporate media have largely chosen to ignore it. Yet, if Trump sends boots on the ground, Yemen will quickly dominate headlines, for the simple reason that US service members will start returning home in coffins.

So far, the Yemeni Armed Forces have limited their confrontations with the US’s naval fleets to defensive maneuvers, meaning that they have not been attempting to sink ships or aircraft carriers and are focused on defending their nation. If a large-scale ground operation is launched, the defensive posture will shift to one of offense.

The ground campaign will not only be costly and far from a walk in the park, the US will also endure direct hits to its vessels and significant casualties. Additionally, we should expect major attacks on both Saudi and Emirati infrastructure, which will disrupt oil markets. It is also very likely that US bases located in the Arabian Peninsula and beyond will come under attack.

Furthermore, we should probably expect occasional strikes against the Zionist regime that will be more intense than previous waves. If we begin to see the civilian death toll climb dramatically in Yemen, while the war is overtly an American-Zionist aggression, the way in which Ansar Allah will deal with it won’t be restricted any longer. On top of this, it could even end up uniting the people of Yemen to an even greater degree as a result, including factions and tribes that have always been at odds with Ansarallah.

Yemen is not Iran, but it has the capacity to inflict considerable losses on the US-allied regimes surrounding it and can target US forces directly. The question then becomes, can Riyadh and Abu Dhabi endure continuous barrages of munitions being fired towards them? Also, when the war lasts much longer than anticipated and the proxy ground force used to attack Yemen is suffering severe losses, as American soldiers return home in body bags, what will the strategy be then?

Will the 80,000 strong force continue to fight if they are suffering considerable losses, all in order to achieve a victory for Israeli strategic interests? Or will they begin to experience serious morale issues and defections? Will the US public be able to stomach the losses, and can the US military itself justify the loss of assets in a pointless fight to please their Zionist allies?

There will be no benefits to launching such an assault, and the US has not amassed nearly enough ground troops to launch a war alone. On every level, this would be a catastrophic strategic blunder. If they lose, this would be an embarrassment of historic proportions and nation-defining victory for the Sana’a government, despite the immense civilian suffering that will inevitably come from the war. All of this leaves out the potential involvement of other regional actors who may take advantage of the situation too.

If Trump decides to go ahead with such a conflict, in order to please his Zionist ally, it will greatly backfire. There will also be no way to hide the fact that he is working against US interests and sacrificing his own citizens in order to make the Israelis satisfied, without any real end goal or vision for victory.

April 21, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | 1 Comment

Yemeni Armed Forces Announce Downing US MQ-9 Drone over Sanaa: Second in 24 Hrs, Sixth in a Month

Al-Manar | April 19, 2025

Within the framework of confronting the ongoing American aggression against Yemen, the Yemeni air defenses succeeded in shooting down a hostile American MQ-9 drone while it was carrying out hostile missions in the airspace of Sanaa Governorate, according to a statement read by the military spokesman General Yahya Sarea.

The drone was shot down with a locally manufactured surface-to-air missile, Sarea affirmed.

“This is the second drone our air defenses have successfully shot down within 24 hours and the sixth during the current month of April. This brings the number of drones shot down during the Battle of the Promised Victory and Holy Jihad to 21.”

The continued airstrikes and targeting of civilians, properties, and public and private facilities will not break the will of the faithful, struggling Yemeni people, the statement added.

“This will only lead to greater steadfastness and unwavering support for the oppressed Palestinian people in confronting the genocidal war crime being perpetrated by the Zionist enemy against our people in Gaza, in response to our religious, moral, and humanitarian duty.”

We will continue our support operations until the aggression against Gaza stops and the siege is lifted, General Sarea affirmed.

April 19, 2025 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , | Leave a comment

With Yemen attack, U.S. continues long history of deliberately bombing hospitals

By Alan MACLEOD | MintPress News | April 11, 2025

In repeatedly targeting and destroying a cancer center in Yemen, the United States has carried on a long pattern of bombing hospitals.

On March 24, the United States carried out a premeditated attack on the Al Rasool Al-Azam Oncology Hospital in Saada, Yemen, turning it into rubble. At least two people were killed and 13 more injured.

This was not an isolated incident. Eight days previously, on March 16, Washington launched 13 separate airstrikes against the building, systematically destroying the hospital’s five blocks.

The Anti-Cancer Fund, a local government medical organization, described the events as a clear “war crime.”

“These attacks are not just airstrikes, but systematic executions, intended to eliminate hope and wipe out life amid a suffocating blockade,” it said in a statement.

The Yemeni Cancer Control Fund, a government body tasked with overseeing the country’s healthcare system, agreed, alleging that they were part of what it called:

A systematic American policy that has targeted the Yemeni people for years through bombings and a suffocating blockade, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis and spreading deadly diseases, including cancer, which has surged due to the use of internationally banned weapons since 2015.”

The newly built Al Rasool Al-Azam Hospital was the centerpiece of the region’s healthcare network. Costing over $7.5 million, the center provided crucial treatment to hundreds of cancer patients who previously went without any care at all or faced an eight-and-a-half-hour round trip to the capital, Sanaa, for therapy.

The repeated strikes on healthcare facilities in Yemen have received virtually zero attention in the United States. Indeed, Washington’s attacks on Yemen have elicited almost no critical coverage, with corporate media seemingly more outraged that senior Trump officials used a Signal group chat to plan their operations than those deeds leading to the deaths of dozens of civilians.

The United States returned to bombing Yemen because its government, in an effort to halt the Israeli assault on Gaza, stopped Israeli ships traveling through the Red Sea. And like Palestine, Yemen is under an international blockade, depriving its people of basic necessities.

Post-9/11 Hospital Attacks

The destruction of the Al Rasool Al-Azam Oncology Center was far from a unique occurrence. In fact, the attack carries on an extremely long and well-documented tradition of the United States targeting hospitals.

In August 2017, the Trump administration itself not only bombed a hospital in Raqqa, Syria but reportedly used white phosphorous munitions to do so. Officials from the Red Crescent reported that the U.S. carried out 20 separate attacks on the hospital, systematically targeting its power generators, vehicles and wards, turning the site into rubble. At least 30 civilians were killed, some likely due to the effects of the white phosphorous, which causes respiratory damage and organ failure.

A highly controversial and widely-banned weapon, white phosphorous instantly ignites upon contact with oxygen, sticks to clothes and skin, and burns at an extremely high temperature. It cannot be extinguished by water, leaving those affected to suffer excruciating – and deadly – injuries.

In 2015, the U.S. Air Force carried out a bombing campaign against a Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. The trauma center, one of the newest, largest, and most recognizable buildings in the city, was deliberately targeted; Doctors Without Borders had already supplied the military with its precise coordinates.

The aftermath of US airstrikes on the MSF Trauma Centre in Kunduz, Afghanistan in October 2015. Photo | MSF

An internal inquiry revealed that the airmen aboard the AC-130 gunship that carried out the operation pushed back against their superiors, questioning the strike’s legality. However, they were overruled and ordered to bomb the hospital regardless of their concerns. A Doctors Without Borders report concluded that the U.S. knew where the hospital was and that it did not hide any Taliban fighters and targeted it anyway. At least 42 people are known to have been killed in the incident.

The 2015 Kunduz bombing was a unique moment in history, as it was the first time that one Nobel Peace Prize winner (Barack Obama) bombed another one (Doctors Without Borders).

During his time in office, Obama bombed seven countries, including Libya. In July 2011, as part of its mission to overthrow the government of Muammar Gaddafi, NATO planes bombed Zliten, destroying the city’s hospital. Eighty-five people were killed, including at least 11 at the medical center. The event helped turn what was once Africa’s most prosperous and stable country into a failed state replete with open-air slave markets. Libya’s downfall has, in turn, helped to destabilize the entire Sahel region.

Perhaps no country in the 21st century has felt the wrath of Washington as much as Iraq. U.S. strikes on civilian infrastructure were a frequent occurrence, and hospitals were no different. Arguably, the most notable example is the April 2003 bombing of the Red Crescent Maternity Hospital in Baghdad.

American missiles struck the city center complex housing the hospital, killing several and wounding at least 25 people, including doctors.

The charitable hospital was crucial to providing affordable healthcare to working-class Iraqis, charging ten times less than the city’s private clinics. It developed a reputation as a first-class maternity hospital, delivering an average of 35 babies per day before the invasion. UNICEF noted a sharp rise in maternal mortality after the bombing, partially due to the lack of obstetric care in Baghdad.

Clinton’s War on Hospitals

Four years earlier, in May 1999, U.S.-led NATO planes dropped cluster munitions on an outdoor market and hospital in the Yugoslav city of Nis, killing at least 15 people and injuring 60 more, according to the hospital’s director. Cluster munitions are now banned under international law. Regardless, between 2023 and 2024, the United States transferred large quantities to Ukraine for use against Russian forces.

Two weeks after the Nis bombing, NATO targeted a hospital in the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade. The missile strike destroyed much of the maternity ward, with rescuers pulling infants and mothers from the rubble in the dead of night. At least three people were reported killed.

The Yugoslav attacks were not the Clinton administration’s only attacks on medical facilities. In 1998, in response to Osama bin Laden’s recent bombings of American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, President Bill Clinton ordered an attack on the Al-Shifa medicine factory in Sudan. Fourteen cruise missiles hit the plant, turning what had been the largest producer of medicine in the country into a pile of twisted metal. The factory had produced over half of Sudan’s pharmaceuticals, including crucial antibiotics and antimalarial and diarrhea medications.

While not a hospital, the destruction of Al-Shifa was vastly more lethal than any other attack listed. The event led to a collapse in the availability of drugs in one of Africa’s poorest countries. The German Ambassador to Sudan estimated that the death toll reached into the “tens of thousands.”

The Clinton administration publicly insisted that the plant was actually bin Laden’s chemical weapons factory. Privately, however, Secretary of State Madeline Albright worked hard to suppress a government report, noting this was not true.

Sudan was Clinton’s second attack on Africa. In June 1993, U.S. soldiers (under U.N. auspices) carried out a mortar attack against Digfer Hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia. The bombs destroyed the main reception area, blew a gaping hole in the wall of the recovery room, and shattered glass across the building. “It probably will never be known how many Somalis died in the U.N. [U.S.] onslaught,” wrote The Chicago Tribune. One reason for this is that helicopter-borne soldiers attacked reporters and photographers attempting to cover the attack, throwing stun grenades at them and chasing them away from the scene.

Latin American Dirty Wars

During the 1980s, Latin America and the Caribbean were the sites of intense U.S. interest. In October 1983, during the U.S. invasion of the island, American warplanes hit the Richmond Hill Mental Hospital in Grenada. The Reagan administration initially attempted to deny the attack before finally conceding their culpability. Dozens of people were injured, and at least 20 were killed, although The New York Times suggested an actual death toll of over twice that number.

The U.S. invaded Grenada in order to crush the island’s socialist revolution. In Central America, however, it relied on funding, training and arming proxy forces to do its bidding. These death squads would wreak destruction across the region and continue to shape its politics and society to this day.

In El Salvador, U.S.-trained forces waged a dirty war against the population in order to crush leftist FMLN guerilla forces. Hospitals were among their preferred targets. On April 15, 1989, for instance, pilots flying U.S.-made A-37 jets and UH 1M and Hughes-500 helicopters bombed an FMLN hospital in San Ildefonso, killing five people.

Paratroopers armed with M-16 rifles arrived on U.S. helicopters and attacked and abducted the medical staff, including French nurse Madeleine Lagadec. Before executing her, the soldiers spent eight hours raping and torturing her. Images of the remains of her mutilated body caused outrage in France, which issued an international arrest warrant for the four U.S.-backed officers overseeing the operation.

In Nicaragua, meanwhile, throughout the 1980s, U.S.-trained paramilitaries intentionally attacked “soft targets” such as hospitals in an effort to terrorize the population into dropping their support for the country’s socialist government.

A study by Richard M. Garfield, Professor of Nursing at Columbia University, found that, between 1981 and 1984, at least 63 health centers were forced to close due to attacks from the U.S.-backed “Contra” death squads.

These operations were carefully planned for maximum effect, with the Contras leaving behind graffiti at the crime scenes, announcing that the “Lion Cubs of Reagan” had visited the area. Throughout their campaign, President Reagan supported the Contras, labeling them “the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.” Dr. Michael Gray, Chairman of Occupational Medicine at Kino Community Hospital in Tucson, AZ., a doctor who visited Nicaragua, held a different opinion, describing them and their actions as “no different than the SS at the end of the Second World War.”

Cold War Killing Machine

During the American wars in Indochina, the bombing of hospitals was official – if unstated – U.S. policy.

Alan Stevenson, a former Army intelligence specialist, testified that, while on duty in Quang Tri province in Vietnam, he regularly identified hospitals to be struck by U.S. fighter jets. “The bigger the hospital, the better it was,” he said, explaining the military’s thought process. “This wasn’t something that was hush‐hush,” he added. “We really didn’t consider it that nasty an item.”

Former Air Force captain Gerald Greven corroborated Stevenson’s allegations, noting that he personally ordered bombing raids against medical centers. It was official policy to “look for hospitals as targets,” he said.

Perhaps the most notorious and well-documented case of this in Vietnam occurred on December 22, 1972, when American planes dropped over 100 bombs on the 1000-bed Bach Mai Hospital in Hanoi, nearly obliterating the building, in the process killing 28 medical staff and an unconfirmed number of patients.

The U.S. military justified the strike by claiming that the hospital “frequently housed antiaircraft positions” and noted its proximity to a military airbase.

During the Congressional hearings on clandestine U.S. activities in Laos and Cambodia, meanwhile, lawmakers were told that the bombing of hospitals was “routine.” Indeed, the former remains the most bombed country, per capita, in world history.

Like in Vietnam, the targeting of hospitals was not only commonplace but deliberate. In 1973, former Army captain Rowan Malphurs testified that, while serving with the Combined Intelligence Center of Vietnam, he helped orchestrate attacks on Cambodian health centers. “We were planning bombings of hospitals,” he said. Yet Malphurs was unrepentant. “I think it was a good thing because the North Vietnamese Army had a privileged sanctuary in Cambodia,” he added.

Thus, as this brief rundown of the past five decades has shown, last month’s attacks on the Al Rasool Al-Azam Oncology Hospital in Yemen are far from an aberration. As these examples from 13 different countries show, Washington, in fact, has a longstanding history of targeting medical centers.

Going further back, the government of North Korea estimates that the U.S. military destroyed some 1,000 hospitals during the Korean War. These numbers are entirely plausible, given the gigantic bombing campaign that the country faced. Entire cities were leveled or flooded after American planes targeted dams. Professor Bruce Cummings, America’s foremost expert on Korea, estimates that the U.S. killed around 25% of the entire North Korean population between 1950 and 1953.

Radio Silence

Article 8 of the Rome Statute, one of the fundamental texts of international law, explicitly identifies “intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not military objectives,” as war crimes.

That the Trump administration repeatedly struck a well-known and easily identifiable hospital in Yemen is an extremely important story. But it has, in fact, received zero coverage in corporate media. Searches for “Al Rasool Al-Azam Hospital” and “Yemen Hospital” in the Dow Jones Factiva news database, a tool that records the content from more than 32,000 U.S. and international media outlets, show that no mainstream American publication has even mentioned this grave war crime.

This is not because the information is particularly hard to find. Well-known media figures such as Pepe Escobar and Jackson Hinkle visited Saada and recorded viral videos from the wreckage where the hospital once stood. The information has been all over social media for weeks and has been covered widely in alternative media, including Drop Site News, AntiWar.com, Truthout, Common Dreams, and foreign outlets such as Al-Jazeera, RT (formerly Russia Today), and The Cradle. Thus, every single editor in every newsroom and television studio in the United States has access to this information and made the decision not to cover the story – a fact that suggests a lot about the diversity of opinion and freedom of our press.

This complete disinterest in U.S. misdeeds sits in stark contrast to when official enemy states do the same thing. When Russia hit hospitals in Ukraine and Syria, those incidents became front page news and led television news bulletins. Moreover, corporate media regularly explicitly framed the events as war crimes (see PBS, Politico, Foreign Policy, CNN, Newsweek, ABC News and the Los Angeles Times). Talking heads waxed lyrical about how Russian President Vladimir Putin must be brought to justice. And yet, when the United States does the same, that cacophony falls to complete silence – even when it is carried out by a president that many in corporate media appear desperate to attack at any opportunity.

What the recent attack on the cancer center in Yemen underlines is that it is dangerous to be a healthcare worker. The United States has a longstanding history of targeting hospitals in nations it selects for regime change. This is true of both Democratic and Republican administrations.

Therefore, the sad truth is that if you are in a country targeted by the United States, you are often safer away from a hospital than inside one.

April 17, 2025 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Will Yemen turn its missiles on the UAE and Saudi Arabia?

By Bandar Hetar | The Cradle | April 16, 2025

The US war on Yemen, now in its second round, has passed the one-month mark with no clear gains and no timeline for success. What is emerging instead is the growing risk of escalation – one that could force regional players, particularly Saudi Arabia and the UAE, into direct confrontation.

Still, several factors may delay or even prevent such a scenario, much like what played out last year. Understanding where this war may be headed requires a clear grasp of the terrain: how Yemen views the conflict, how its Persian Gulf neighbors are reacting, and what could trigger a wider eruption or a negotiated backtrack.

Sanaa ties its military strategy to Gaza’s resistance

Even in western circles, there’s little dispute that the war on Yemen is now deeply intertwined with Israel’s brutal war on Gaza. Washington tried, under former US president Joe Biden, to separate the two. But the reality on the ground tells a different story – one where Sanaa’s military operations were in lockstep with events in Palestine.

That link became even clearer after the January 2025 ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, which prompted a pause in Yemen’s attacks – until Tel Aviv predictably walked back its commitments. US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House brought with it a resumption of strikes on Yemen, under the pretext of defending international shipping.

Yet those attacks would not have taken place had the US not already committed to shielding Israeli vessels. The new administration, unlike the last, makes no real attempt to disguise the overlap between the two fronts.

Yemen’s strategy has been clear from the outset: Its military activity is calibrated with the resistance in Gaza. Palestinian factions determine the pace of escalation or calm, while Yemen remains prepared to absorb the fallout.

Sanaa has paid a steep price for this stance. Washington has moved to freeze economic negotiations between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, effectively punishing the former for refusing to abandon its military support for Gaza. The US has dangled economic incentives in exchange for neutrality – offers readily accepted by Arab states across the region – but Sanaa has refused to fold.

Faced with a binary choice – either maintain its support for Palestine and accept a freeze on domestic arrangements, or open a second front with Riyadh and Abu Dhabi – Yemen chose to stay the course.

That decision was rooted in three core beliefs: that Palestine must be supported unconditionally, even if it means sacrificing urgent national interests; that Ansarallah’s political identity is grounded in opposition to Israeli hegemony and thus incompatible with any alignment with Persian Gulf normalization; and that Yemen must deny Washington and Tel Aviv the opportunity to distract it with side wars designed to weaken its strategic focus.

Gulf frustration builds over Yemen’s defiance

Arab coalition partners Saudi Arabia and the UAE have not taken kindly to Yemen’s decision. Both countries have used the moment to begin backpedaling on the April 2022 truce and to impose punitive costs on Sanaa for throwing its weight behind Gaza.

The optics have not favored either of the Gulf monarchies. Abu Dhabi is fully normalized with Israel, while Riyadh is edging ever closer. Yemen, meanwhile – still scarred from years of Saudi–Emirati aggression – has moved swiftly to back the Palestinian cause. The contrast could not be more stark: The Arab state most brutalized by Riyadh and Abu Dhabi is now standing up for Palestine while the aggressors look away.

Yemen’s stance also clashes with the broader geopolitical alignment of both Persian Gulf states, which remain deeply embedded in Washington’s orbit. But their frustration has remained mostly rhetorical.

Despite their roles in the so-called “Prosperity Guardian” alliance, neither Saudi Arabia nor the UAE has made major military moves against Yemen since the new round of US airstrikes began. Initially, Riyadh attempted to tie Yemen’s maritime operations in the Red Sea to the Gaza war, but that framing soon gave way to vague talk of threats to commercial shipping – code for backpedaling.

Saudi political messaging shifted sharply in January when it refused to take part in joint US–UK bombing raids. Its defense ministry moved quickly to deny reports that Saudi airspace had been opened for US strikes, and later distanced itself from any Israeli involvement. The message from Riyadh was clear: It does not want to be dragged into another full-scale war with Yemen – not now.

Yemen counters with a policy of containment 

Despite Saudi Arabia’s retreat from its prior commitments, Yemen has actively encouraged Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to maintain a posture of neutrality. This is not out of optimism but pragmatism: Avoiding a wider war with the Persian Gulf would prevent a dangerous regional blowout. Sanaa’s goal has been to steer Saudi and Emirati decision-making away from military confrontation, proxy mobilization, or economic escalation.

That last point nearly tipped the balance in July 2024, when Riyadh instructed its puppet government in Aden to relocate Yemen’s central banks from Sanaa. It was a clear economic provocation – and a red line.

Within days, Ansarallah leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi delivered a sharp warning, framing the Saudi move as part of an Israeli–American playbook.

“The Americans are trying to entangle you [Saudi Arabia], and if you want that, then try it … The move towards aggressive escalation against our country is something we can never accept,” he revealed in a 7 July 2024 speech.

He warned Riyadh that falling for this trap would be “a terrible mistake and a great failure, and it is our natural right to counter any aggressive step.”

Sanaa responded with an unmistakable deterrent equation: “banks for banks, Riyadh Airport for Sanaa Airport, ports for ports.”

The Saudi maneuver may have been a test of Yemen’s resolve, possibly based on the assumption that Sanaa was too overextended – facing down a US-led coalition and spiraling domestic hardships – to respond decisively.

If so, Riyadh miscalculated. Houthi’s reply was blunt:

“This is not a matter of allowing you to destroy this people and push it to complete collapse so that no problems arise. Let a thousand problems arise. Let matters escalate as far as they may.”

No appetite in Riyadh or Abu Dhabi for a war without guarantees

The day after Houthi’s warning, massive protests erupted across Yemen. Millions marched in condemnation of Saudi provocations, offering the clearest signal yet that public opinion was firmly aligned behind the resistance – and willing to escalate.

Riyadh knows this. Even before the latest crisis, much of Yemeni society held Saudi Arabia and the UAE responsible for what even the UN called the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. Any new conflict would only deepen that anger.

Faced with the threat of direct retaliation, Riyadh backed off its banking gambit. The memory of past Yemeni strikes on Saudi oil facilities – particularly those between 2019 and 2021 –still haunts the Saudi leadership.

Today, Yemen’s capabilities have expanded. It now possesses hypersonic missiles and increasingly sophisticated drone technologies. And it is precisely because of these advances that Washington has failed to strong-arm the Gulf into renewed warfare. There are no meaningful US security guarantees on the table – nothing that would shield Saudi oil fields, critical infrastructure, or commercial shipping lanes from blowback.

The failures are already evident. The “Prosperity Guardian” coalition has done little to stop Yemeni strikes on Israeli-linked vessels, and US–UK airstrikes have failed to stem Yemen’s ability to hit deep inside Israel. These battlefield realities have changed the calculus in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Escalation, for now, is off the table.

Yemen’s red lines are expanding

That does not mean Washington has stopped trying to drag Saudi Arabia and the UAE into the fight. The Biden administration failed to do so. The Trump team, however, is seen as more aggressive and more likely to provide advanced weapons systems that might tempt Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to take the plunge.

There is also the perception among Gulf elites that this is a strategic opening: Syria’s collapse, Hezbollah’s supposed decline, and shifting regional dynamics may provide a rare window to redraw the map.

But for the Saudis, Yemen remains the central concern. A liberated, ideologically defiant state on their southern border is an existential threat – not only to security, but to the cultural rebranding project that the Kingdom has invested so heavily in. The UAE shares similar anxieties. A rising Yemeni Resistance Axis threatens its carefully curated image as a regional player in sync with Israeli and western interests.

That is why Sanaa has placed its forces on high alert. Ansarallah is monitoring every move by Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and their local proxies – many of whom are eager to join the war. These groups have signaled readiness to participate in an international coalition to “protect shipping,” and have already held direct meetings with US military and political officials.

But the Sanaa government knows these factions would not act without orders. If they are mobilized for a broad ground offensive, Yemen will respond by targeting the powers behind them. Any ground war will be seen as a Saudi–Emirati initiative, not a local one. The same logic applies to renewed airstrikes or deeper economic war. These are Sanaa’s red lines.

A warning to the Axis of Normalization 

Abdul Malik al-Houthi laid it out clearly during a 4 April address:

“I advise you all [Arab states neighboring Yemen], and we warn you at the same time: Do not get involved with the Americans in supporting the Israelis. The American enemy is in aggression against our country in support of the Israeli enemy. The battle is between us and the Israeli enemy.

The Americans support it, protect it, and back it. Do not get involved in supporting the Israeli enemy … any cooperation with the Americans in aggression against our country, in any form, is support for the Israeli enemy, it is cooperation with the Israeli enemy, it is conspiracy against the Palestinian cause.”

He went further:

“If you cooperate with the Americans: Either by allowing him to attack us from bases in your countries. Or with financial support. Or logistical support. Or information support. It is support for the Israeli enemy, advocacy for the Israeli enemy, and backing for the Israeli enemy.”

This was not just a warning. It was a strategic declaration. Any country crossing these lines will be treated as an active participant in the war – and subject to retaliation.

The message is aimed not just at Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, but at other Arab and African states that might be tempted to join the fray under the guise of “protecting international navigation.”

Yemen is preparing for all scenarios. It will not be caught off guard. And this time, it won’t be fighting alone.

April 16, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US airstrikes in Yemen lay groundwork for ‘ground invasion’ by UAE-backed militias: Report

The Cradle | April 15, 2025

With US support, UAE proxy militias in Yemen are planning a ground offensive to take the port city of Hodeidah from the Ansarallah-led Yemeni government and armed forces, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on 15 April, in a move that would reignite the country’s devastating civil war.

“Private American security contractors provided advice to the Yemeni factions on a potential ground operation, people involved in the planning said. The United Arab Emirates, which supports these factions, raised the plan with American officials in recent weeks,” the WSJ wrote.

The ground offensive seeks to take advantage of the recent US bombing campaign targeting the Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF).

US officials speaking with the newspaper said Washington has launched more than 350 strikes during its current campaign against Yemen and claim that the YAF has been weakened as a result.

While the Ansarallah-led National Salvation Government controls Yemen’s most populous areas, including the capital, Sanaa, and the strategic port city of Hodeidah, other parts of the country have remained in control of UAE and Saudi-supported factions since the end of the civil war in 2022.

Under the plan being discussed, factions of the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) would deploy their forces north to the western Yemeni coast and try to seize the Red Sea port of Hodeidah, pro-UAE Yemeni sources said.

If successful, the ground operation would push the YAF back from large parts of the coast from where they have launched attacks on Israeli-linked ships transiting the Red Sea.

The YAF began targeting Israeli-linked ships in November 2023 in response to Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. The US launched a war against Yemen and the YAF on Israel’s behalf shortly thereafter.

Capturing Hodeidah would be a “major blow” to the Ansarallah-led Yemeni government, “depriving them of an economic lifeline while also cutting off their main route to receive arms from Iran,” the WSJ wrote.

“A major ground offensive risks reigniting a Yemeni civil war that has been dormant for years and that spurred a humanitarian crisis when a Saudi–Emirati coalition supported local ground forces with a bombing campaign,” the WSJ added.

Officials from Saudi Arabia, which supports another Yemeni faction, the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), have privately said they will not join or help a ground offensive in Yemen.

During the civil war, the Saudi-led coalition, alongside the UAE, conducted a major bombing campaign in Yemen that killed nearly 15,000 people, while the Saudi navy blockaded Yemen’s major ports, causing a humanitarian crisis that killed hundreds of thousands more.

In 2018, the Saudi Kingdom launched three operations against Ansarallah in an attempt to capture Hodeidah, yet failed.

Ansarallah forces retaliated by launching ballistic missile and drone attacks on Saudi cities, including striking a Saudi Aramco oil storage facility in Jeddah, which threatened to devastate the kingdom’s oil production and exports.

The YAF also responded to the UAE’s aggression on Yemen by launching its first drone and missile attacks on Abu Dhabi in January 2022, targeting three oil trucks and an under-construction airport extension infrastructure.

Both the UAE and Saudi Arabia allegedly cooperated with and recruited fighters from the local Al-Qaeda affiliate, known as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), to assist in their proxy war against Ansarallah.

April 15, 2025 Posted by | War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Standing at the Edge of the Iran War Cliff

By Ron Paul | April 14, 2025

Millions of people around the world were at the edge of their seats over the weekend, waiting to hear whether Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff’s indirect talks with the Iranian foreign minister would ratchet down tensions or would break down and bring on a major Middle East war.

If it seems bizarre that the outcome of a meeting between a US president’s designated negotiator and a foreign government minister could determine whether we plunge into possibly our biggest war since World War II, that’s because it is bizarre. In fact, this is an excellent example of why our Founders were so determined to keep warmaking authority out of the Executive Branch of government. No one person – much less his aide – should have the power to take this country to war.

That is why the Constitution places the authority to go to war firmly and exclusively in the hands of the representatives of the people: the US Congress. After all, it is the US people who will be expected to fight the wars and to pay for the wars and to bear the burden of the outcome of the wars. When that incredible power is placed in the hands of one individual – even if that individual is elected – the temptation to use it is far too great. Our Founders recognized this weakness in the system they were rebelling against – the British monarchy – so they wisely corrected it when they drafted our Constitution.

Unless the US is under direct attack or is facing imminent direct attack, the Constitution requires Congress to deliberate, discuss, and decide whether a conflict or potential conflict is worth bringing the weight of the US military to bear. They wanted it harder, not easier, to take us to war.

When wars can be started by presidents with no authority granted by Congress, the results can be the kinds of endless military engagements with ever-shifting, unachievable objectives such as we’ve seen in Afghanistan and Iraq.

We are currently seeing another such endless conflict brewing with President Trump’s decision to start bombing Yemen last month. The stated objectives– to end Houthi interference with Israeli Red Sea shipping – are not being achieved so, as usually happens, the bombing expands and creates more death and destruction for the civilian population. In the last week or so, US bombs have struck the water supply facilities for 50,000 civilians and have apparently blown up a civilian tribal gathering.

Starting a war with Iran was the furthest thing from the minds of American voters last November, and certainly those who voted for Donald Trump were at least partly motivated by his promise to end current wars and start no new wars. However, there is a strange logic that to fulfill the promise of no new wars, the US must saber rattle around the world to intimidate others from crossing the White House. This is what the recycled phrase “peace through strength” seems to have come to mean. But the real strength that it takes to make and keep peace is the strength to just walk away. It is the strength to stop meddling in conflicts that have nothing to do with the United States.

That is where Congress comes in. Except they are not coming in. They are nowhere to be found. And that is not a good thing.

April 14, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

US strikes on Yemeni ceramics factory leave dozens of casualties

The Cradle | April 14, 2025

A US attack on a ceramics factory near Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, late on 13 April has killed and injured dozens of civilians, with the toll expected to rise in the coming hours.

“Six citizens were martyred and 20 others were injured, including critical injuries. Civil defense and ambulance teams are working hard to search for victims and extinguish the fires,” a spokesman for the Yemeni Health Ministry, Dr Anis al-Asbahi, told SABA news agency.

Video footage showed heavy destruction and teams attempting to extinguish large fires at the Al-Sawari factory in the Sanaa governorate’s Bani Matar district.

US warplanes also “launched two raids on the Al-Yatmah area in the Khabb wal Shaaf district, northeast of Al-Jawf governorate,” according to Al Mayadeen’s correspondent.

Washington’s latest deadly attack comes as the Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) and Ansarallah movement continue their operations despite a US campaign of daily airstrikes which aim to stifle Sanaa’s military capabilities – but have instead only taken a heavy toll on civilians.

The YAF announced on Sunday evening that it downed a US MQ-9 Reaper drone – worth tens of millions of US dollars – in the airspace of Yemen’s Hajjah governorate. This was the fourth MQ-9 shot down within two weeks and the 19th since the start of the war in Gaza.

“The Armed Forces reiterate that their military capabilities have not been affected and that the ongoing US aggression against our country will only bring more disappointment and failure,” the YAF said in a statement.

The US has been bombing Yemen every day since 15 March, when US President Donald Trump renewed – with severe intensity – the campaign which was started by the former administration of US president Joe Biden.

Dozens of people have been killed in the attacks, including women and children.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vowed last week that the campaign against Yemen is “about to get worse.”

The violent attacks come in response to Yemen’s reimposition of a ban on Israeli shipping in the Red Sea and elsewhere, as well as its renewal of drone and missile attacks on Israel after Tel Aviv restarted the war on Gaza last month.

The YAF has been responding to Washington’s attacks with operations targeting US warships in the Red Sea – including the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier.

According to sources cited in US media recently, Washington has burned through massive amounts of munitions and has spent close to $1 billion, but has failed to significantly impact the YAF and Ansarallah – which are merged.

April 14, 2025 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Signalgate’ Highlights the Trump Administration’s Disregard for Civilian Life

By James Rushmore | The Libertarian Institute | April 8, 2025

Much of the media discourse surrounding Signalgate has focused on its national security implications. Nevertheless, the most important—and most overlooked—dimension of The Atlantic leak is the unvarnished look it provides at the Trump administration’s disregard for civilian life. At no point before or after the U.S. airstrikes against Yemen do any members of the Houthi principals committee acknowledge the human cost of such military operations. This brazen approach to warfare contravenes the America First ethos that President Donald Trump and his allies purport to embody.

Many have cited Vice President J.D. Vance’s contributions to the group chat as evidence of some non-interventionist undercurrent running within the administration. On Friday, March 14, Vance questioned the prudence of bombing Yemen. Vance’s instincts lead him to the right conclusion (“I think we are making a mistake”), but his slavish commitment to certain political imperatives (“The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message”) lead him to preemptively kneecap his own argument (“I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself”), effectively nullifying any critiques he might have offered.

Furthermore, Vance fails to mention the fact that the Houthis had refrained from attacking U.S. military and commercial vessels since a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was announced back in January, nor did he mention that the Houthis were only reimposing the blockade on Israeli shipping in the Red Sea after Israel reneged on the terms of the ceasefire. His failure to acknowledge the elephant in the room—the fact that the attack on Yemen is being carried out exclusively for the benefit of Israel—is glaring.

Joe Kent, Trump’s nominee to serve as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, responds to Vance by agreeing that there was no need to expedite the strikes. He is also the first person in the chat to reference the Israel factor. However, he inexplicably describes the likelihood that Israel “will take strikes” and “ask [the U.S.] for more support to replenish whatever they use against the Houthis” as “a minor factor.” Like Vance, Kent offers a very feeble critique of the proposed airstrikes, and the threadbare nature of his contribution becomes all the more indefensible when one considers the vehemence with which he previously opposed military action in the Middle East.

To no one’s surprise, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and National Security Advisor Michael Waltz manage to easily neutralize Vance’s irresolute objections. Later in the chat, Vance says, “I just hate bailing Europe out again,” which prompts Hegseth to respond with, “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.” Note that neither official objects to Israeli freeloading.

On Saturday, March 15, about two hours before the first strikes, Hegseth shares the tentative schedule for the forthcoming operation. He follows up that post by wishing, “Godspeed to our Warriors.” Vance writes, “I will say a prayer for victory,” prompting two participants to respond with prayer emoji reactions.

At 2:00 p.m., Waltz tells Vance, “The first target—their top missile guy—we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.” Vance offers a one-word response: “Excellent.” What follows is a series of congratulatory, emoji-heavy responses from the other officials in the chat. Among them is Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who writes, “Great work and effects!” Gabbard previously opposed U.S. support for “Saudi Arabia’s genocidal war in Yemen.” In September 2018, she charged that the war had “killed thousands and thousands of innocent Yemeni people and caused mass starvation and suffering, a cholera epidemic, [and] the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.” In November 2018, she famously tweeted:

U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, who received much of the credit for the now defunct ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, also joins in the festivities. He shares two prayer emojis, a flexed muscle emoji, and two American flag emojis.

Nobody in the conversation displays any interest in the humanitarian implications of destroying an apartment building, nor does anybody ask about collateral damage. At least 53 people, including five children and two women, were killed in that day’s strikes. But even if the numbers provided by the Houthi-run Health Ministry were entirely fraudulent, the fact that none of the participants raise any objections to U.S. attacks on civilian infrastructure is, while unsurprising, still disturbing. It also undermines the notion that the second Trump administration is an America First one. It is not difficult to envision a scenario in which the U.S. assault on Yemen fuels Islamist recruitment efforts, leading to deadly consequences for American civilians and military personnel down the line.

April 8, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Collapsing Empire: Yemen shatters the illusion of US air power, yet again

By Kit Klarenberg | Press TV | April 7, 2025

Since March 15, Washington has repeatedly barraged Yemen from the sky, killing and injuring countless innocent civilians while destroying vital infrastructure.

For example, on April 2, US jets targeted a reservoir in western Yemen, cutting off access to water for over 50,000 people.

Only three days later, US President Donald Trump gloatingly posted a horrific video on social media of a tribal gathering being incinerated in a US airstrike. He falsely claimed the individuals were “Houthis gathered for instructions on an attack.”

In a chilling coincidence, the bloodcurdling clip was published on the 15th anniversary of the release of “Collateral Murder” by WikiLeaks, a notorious video filmed three years earlier of US Apache helicopter pilots firing indiscriminately at a group of Iraqi civilians and journalists while sickly cackling at the carnage they were inflicting.

While that disclosure contemporaneously caused international outcry and scandal and made WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange an internationally wanted man, openly advertising unconscionable war crimes is now apparently a formal US government policy.

US officials have pledged that renewed hostilities against Yemen will continue “indefinitely”, while Trump has bragged how “relentless strikes” have “decimated” the Ansarullah resistance movement.

Yet, on April 4, the New York Times reported Pentagon officials are “privately” briefing that while the current bombing campaign on Yemen “is consistently heavier than strikes conducted by the Biden administration”, the effort has achieved “only limited success in destroying the Houthis’ vast, largely underground arsenal of missiles, drones and launchers.”

Yemen’s anti-genocide Red Sea blockade thus endures untrammelled.

Moreover, “in just three weeks, the Pentagon has used $200 million worth of munitions, in addition to the immense operational and personnel costs to deploy two aircraft carriers, additional B-2 bombers and fighter jets, as well as Patriot and THAAD air defenses” to West Asia.

The total cost of the military adventure to date could exceed “well over $1 billion by next week.” This not only means “supplemental funds” for the operation need to be sought from US Congress, but there are grave anxieties about ammunition availability:

“So many precision munitions are being used, especially advanced long-range ones, that some Pentagon contingency planners are growing concerned about overall Navy stocks and implications for any situation in which the United States would have to ward off an attempted invasion of Taiwan by China.”

The New York Times also observed that the White House hasn’t indicated “why it thinks its campaign against the group will succeed”, after the Biden administration’s long-running Operation Prosperity Guardian embarrassingly failed to break the Red Sea’s blockade.

The answer is simple – for three decades, the Empire has been consumed by a dangerously self-deluded belief in the primacy of air power over all other forms of warfare. Ergo, the Trump administration believes that if only they intensify Yemen’s bombardment, Ansarullah will crumble.

‘Significantly damaged’

In April 1996, then USAF Chief of Staff Ronald R Fogleman boldly declared that a “new American way of war” was emerging.

While traditionally the Empire had “relied on large forces employing mass, concentration, and firepower to attrit enemy forces and defeat them,” now technological advances and “unique military advantages” – specifically in the field of air power – could be used “to compel an adversary to do our will at the least cost to the US in lives and resources.”

At the time, the Empire was riding high on the perceived success of NATO’s Operation Deliberate Force, an 11-day saturation bombing of Bosnia conducted the previous August/September.

Multiple US officials eagerly attributed the campaign to ending the three-year-long civil war in the former Yugoslav republic by precipitating negotiations. They omitted to mention that the airstrikes’ predominant military utility was allowing US-armed, trained, and directed Bosniak and Croat proxy forces to overrun Bosnian Serb positions without significant opposition, or their brazen sabotage of prior peace settlements.

Nonetheless, the narrative that wars could be won via airpower alone, and the US and its allies should invest in and structure their military machines accordingly, palpably percolated thereafter. The illegal March – June 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia provided the Empire with an opportunity to put this theory to the test. For 78 straight days, NATO relentlessly blitzed civilian, government, and industrial infrastructure throughout the country, killing untold numbers of innocent people – including children – and disrupting daily life for millions.

The purported purpose of this onslaught was to prevent a planned genocide of Kosovo’s Albanian population by Yugoslav forces. As a May 2000 British parliamentary committee concluded, however, it was only after the bombing began that Belgrade began assaulting the province.

Moreover, this effort was explicitly concerned with neutralising the CIA and MI6-backed Kosovo Liberation Army, an Al Qaeda-linked extremist group, not attacking [ethnic] Albanian citizens [of Yugoslavia]. Meanwhile, in September 2001, a UN court determined that Yugoslavia’s actions in Kosovo were not genocidal in nature or intent.

On June 3, 1999, Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic folded under Russian pressure, agreeing to withdraw Belgrade’s forces from Kosovo. While Western officials celebrated a resounding victory for NATO and airpower more generally, the mainstream media – at least initially – told a very different story.

The LA Times observed that the Yugoslav army “still has 80% to 90% of its tanks, 75% of its most sophisticated surface-to-air missiles and 60% of its MIG fighter planes.” Meanwhile, its key barracks and ammunition depots weren’t damaged at all.

The New York Times reported that post-war Kosovo was bereft “of the scorched carcasses of tanks or other military equipment NATO officials had expected to find.”

While NATO and Pentagon apparatchiks stood “by their claims to have significantly damaged” Yugoslav forces, the outlet admitted Belgrade’s units withdrawing from Kosovo “seemed spirited and defiant rather than beaten.”

They took with them hundreds of tanks, personnel carriers, artillery batteries, vehicles, and “military equipment loaded on trucks” completely unscathed by the bombing campaign.

‘Campaign analysis’

Contemporary declassified British Ministry of Defence files amply underline the catastrophic failure of NATO’s blitzkrieg of Yugoslavia. Once Milosevic finally capitulated and NATO and UN ‘peacekeepers’ were granted unimpeded access to Kosovo, they struggled to find a single “burnt out tank” or other indications of vehicle or equipment losses on the ground.

A June 7 “campaign analysis” noted, “NATO took a lot longer, required a lot more effort and damaged less than perhaps we believed we could achieve at the start of the air campaign.”

It added that the Yugoslav “war-fighting doctrine” placed “great emphasis on dispersal, the use of camouflage, dummy targets, concealment and bunkers” to avoid detection, and “early assessments indicate that they appear to have applied this doctrine very successfully.”

Adverse weather conditions were also routinely exploited as cover for anti-KLA operations. The memo further recorded “there was no evidence… of disintegration of Serb forces in Kosovo,” with Yugoslav military operations continuing apace until Milosevic agreed to withdraw from the province, “and beyond”.

Yet, these damning observations remained secret. At a June 11, 1999 press conference, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Henry Shelton proudly displayed a variety of colourful charts, boasting how hundreds of Yugoslav tanks, personnel carriers, and artillery pieces had been decimated by NATO, without the alliance suffering a single casualty.

His crooked accounting of the bombing remained universal mainstream gospel until a May 2000 Newsweek investigation exposed the wide-ranging “coverup” via which the Pentagon had spun the “ineffective” assault as a resounding success.

When NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark, who oversaw the bombing, learned of the pronounced lack of damage to the Yugoslav military on the ground in Kosovo, he dispatched a dedicated team of USAF investigators to the province.

They “spent weeks combing Kosovo by helicopter and by foot” and turned up evidence of just 14 destroyed tanks. Meanwhile, of the 744 strikes on Yugoslav military equipment and installations claimed by Pentagon officials, just 58 were confirmed.

By contrast, USAF identified ample evidence of the Yugoslav military’s skill at deception. They found a key bridge had been protected from NATO bombers “by constructing, 300 yards upstream, a fake bridge made of polyethylene sheeting stretched over the river” – the military alliance “destroyed” the “phony bridge” many times.

Additionally, “artillery pieces were faked out of long black logs stuck on old truck wheels, and an anti-aircraft missile launcher was fabricated from the metal-lined paper used to make European milk cartons.”

Flummoxed, “Clark insisted that the Serbs had hidden their damaged equipment and that the team hadn’t looked hard enough.” So a new report was fabricated wholecloth, validating the fiction that NATO’s destruction of Yugoslav forces had been extensive. Newsweek noted its findings were “so devoid of hard data that Pentagon officials jokingly called it ‘fiber-free’.”

An official Department of Defense “After-Action Report to Congress” on the bombing campaign cited the report’s figures, although stressed no supporting evidence was forthcoming. With eerie prescience, Newsweek concluded:

“[This] distortion could badly mislead future policymakers… After the November 2000 presidential election, the Pentagon will go through one of its quadrennial reviews, assigning spending priorities. The Air Force will claim the lion’s share… The risk is policymakers and politicians will become even more wedded to myths like ‘surgical strikes’.”

“The lesson of Kosovo is civilian bombing works, though it raises moral qualms… Against military targets, high-altitude bombing is overrated. Any commander in chief who does not face up to those hard realities will be fooling himself.”

‘Incredibly different’

The “distortion” that NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia was a military triumph has endured ever since. Not only has it served as justification for multiple subsequent calamitous Western “interventions”, such as the 2011 destruction of Libya, but USAF continues to claim “the lion’s share” of US defence spending.

According to 2024 figures, over a quarter of Washington’s total defence budget – $216.1 billion – is earmarked for the Air Force. Additionally, $202.6 billion is spent on the Navy, which typically operates in close tandem with USAF.

However large these figures may appear on paper, they do not translate into serious war-fighting capability, as Operation Prosperity Guardian in Yemen amply underscored.

A little-noticed July 2024 Associated Press report on the return home of US fighter pilots after nine months of failing to thwart Yemen’s Red Sea blockade noted that battling an enemy capable of fighting back “in the most intense running sea battle the Navy has faced since World War II” had been deeply psychologically ravaging for all concerned.

As a result, Pentagon officials were investigating how to tend to thousands of pilots and sailors adversely affected by their involvement in the bruising effort, “including counseling and treatment for possible post-traumatic stress.”

One pilot told Associated Press, “most of [us]… weren’t used to being fired on given the nation’s previous military engagements in recent decades.” He described the experience of Ansarullah’s retaliation as “incredibly different” and “traumatizing”, as getting shot at is “something that we don’t think about a lot.”

A new experience it may be – but it’s one that Washington needs to adapt to urgently. As a July 2024 RAND Corporation report found the US military was woefully ill-equipped sustain a major conflict with “peer-level competitors” such as China for any length of time, and faced significant threats from “relatively unsophisticated actors” such as Ansarullah, who have been “able to obtain and use modern technology (e.g., drones) to strategic effect.”

As Axios has reported, Pentagon weapons procurer Bill LaPlante – a journeyman engineer and physicist – has been awed by Yemen’s use of “increasingly sophisticated weapons,” including missiles that “can do things that are just amazing.”

He claims that Yemeni capabilities are “getting scary”. Once the US has exhausted itself yet again, failing to crush the Yemeni resistance, we could see yet more of its arsenal in play – and in turn, another historic defeat of the Empire, as inflicted over the course of Operation Prosperity Guardian.

April 7, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

SABA source refutes Trump claim of killing Yemeni operatives in strike

Saba – April 5, 2025

Sana’a – A private source to the Yemeni news agency, Saba, on Saturday denied the allegations made by the criminal US President Trump regarding what he described as the targeting of a secret meeting of military leaders preparing to carry out naval operations.

The source explained that the video clip published by the criminal Trump, claiming that it was a gathering of military leaders, was merely an event for a social Eid visit in Hodeida province. Similar events are held in various provinces on all holidays and occasions, and this is well known to all Yemeni people.

He emphasized that those present at that gathering had no connection to the operations carried out by the Yemeni Armed Forces, which are implementing the decision to ban navigation on ships linked to the American and Israeli enemy, as the criminal Trump claimed.

The source stated that this heinous American crime, which left dozens of martyrs and wounded, reflects the extent of America’s bankruptcy and failure in its aggression against Yemen, and that it is an extension of the genocide committed by the Israeli-American aggression in Gaza.

He stressed that this heinous crime will not be forgotten, and that the Yemeni armed forces, which stood up for the people of Gaza, will not let the blood of the Yemeni people go in vain.

April 6, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US Bombing the Houthis is like Swatting at Buzzing Insects

By Seth Ferris – New Eastern Outlook – April 5, 2025

The U.S. bombing campaign against the Houthis is less about securing shipping routes and more about advancing broader geopolitical strategies tied to Israel, Iran, and U.S. domestic politics.

This headline is more than provocative, as it enshrines a critical analysis of what is going on, and this has little to do with the defense of shipping in the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, or how Houthis are trying to stand against the continuous genocide of Palestine. It has more to do with the Greater Israel project, keeping Netanyahu out of jail, and for Trump and Republicans to pay the piper for the campaign chest that secured the US election for Trump and his minions.

Attacking the Houthis is the preliminary step of a larger, interconnected geopolitical strategy that includes Greater Israel, shifting the focus from the disaster in Ukraine, and keeping the arms manufacturers as happy as hogs rolling in fresh crap.

On March 15th, too much fanfare from Trump, who promised to use “overwhelming lethal force” the US resumed bombing Houthi controlled Yemen, trying to defeat a movement that has been bombed by either the US or its regional allies such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states since 2014 when the Yemeni civil war broke out, with little real effect to date.

The ostensible cause of the attacks appears to have been the Houthi decision to reinstate its blockade of Red Sea traffic heading to Israel, in response to Israel reneging on its ceasefire commitments and blockading, and now, as of Tuesday, 18th March, bombing and invading the Gaza Strip, killing hundreds of civilians in the process.

American attacks on Yemen by the aircraft of the US Navy’s 5th fleet have certainly been spectacular, but their usefulness is seriously in doubt. Despite claims by the USN of strikes on military targets, the majority of casualties are seen to be civilians. US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz says that the Houthi blockade of Israel is causing 75% of US flagged ships to take the much longer route around Africa, and said about the US strikes:

“We’ve hit their headquarters,” Waltz said. “We’ve hit communications nodes, weapons factories and even some of their over-the-water drone production facilities.”

The Houthi leadership has strongly refuted these claims, with a spokesman saying:

“The pictures, scenes, evidence, types of victims, and testimonies of survivors from the targeted sites confirm that it is targeting residential neighbourhoods and innocent civilians, and provide conclusive evidence that the US is deliberately taking the lives of defenceless civilians and destroying the capabilities of our people.”

Given the horrendous rhetoric used by Trump in his posts on his Truthsocial site, where he accused the Houthis of being “barbarians” and went on to say:

“Watch how it will get progressively worse — It’s not even a fair fight, and never will be,” Trump added. “They will be completely annihilated!”

It seems pretty clear that the Houthis are right, and that the US is hitting civilian targets in frustration at not being able to identify legitimate military targets. Trump went on to threaten Iran, saying:

“Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN, and IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!”

Given Trump’s promises on the election campaign to stop wars, and bring peace, particularly to Ukraine, this rhetoric is rather an about-face. One can only come to the conclusion that Trump is trying to escape from the debacle in Ukraine by distracting the public with another war, this time against Yemen and, one fears, Iran, which also will benefit the real ruler of the US, Benjamin Netanyahu.

But how effective is this likely to be? I believe that in his hubris, egged on by the new Defense Secretary Pete Hesgith, a US Evangelical Christian and rabid Zionist, Trump is repeating the disastrous mistakes of a well-trodden US path of intervention and inevitable failure.

Firing drones and missiles at cargo ships bound for Israel, even without sinking any ships, is a victory for the Houthis, as it forces ships to take the long way around the Cape of Good Hope, and shows the world what the US can do in terms of air superiority is not enough, as to stop these attacks, you would need to send in ground troops, something the US administration would have to be mad to do, as the British could well attest to given their occupation of Yemen in the 19th and 20th centuries.

With regard to the intensity of US air attacks, as with any force of national liberation, like the Algerians, Vietnamese, Angolans, and many others in the 20th century, just surviving is already a form of victory for the Houthis. Every day they hold their ground, they rewrite the script a little. They’re showing that even without matching the U.S. or Saudi Arabia in terms of high-tech weaponry, they can still have massive strategic impact — like forcing global trade routes to detour thousands of miles. That’s asymmetrical warfare in full force.

As the US and its allies know only too well, U.S. air power, while impressive for breaking regular military formations, has a limit. It can punish, but it can’t control the terrain or win hearts and minds from 30,000 feet. Boots on the ground? That’s a whole different ballgame. Politically and militarily, there’s little appetite for another drawn-out Middle East quagmire. The U.S. knows how that ends, Israel knows too!

This whole horse and pony show is becoming a test of global logistics and willpower — not just firepower. The Houthis have leveraged a relatively small amount of resources to cause ripple effects across oil markets, insurance premiums, and shipping delays — even reshaping how the world thinks about “secure” sea lanes. Their damage to the economies of their enemy Israel, and its backers in the US and EU, is out of all proportion to the money spent by themselves.

This is also reflected in the weaponry used, with relatively cheap drones and ballistic missiles needing to be countered by vastly more expensive US air defense missiles and extremely expensive guided bombs. The previous, spectacularly unsuccessful, campaign “Operation Prosperity Guardian” to bring the Houthis to heel after they put a blockade on Israel in response to the genocidal campaign in Gaza, saw vast expenditure of hideously expensive US missiles which were used to shoot down drones that cost around US$ 20,000 per shot:

According to the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance (as of 2022), the SM-2 costs $2.1 million per unit; the SM-6 costs $4.3 million; and the ESSM Sea Sparrows costs $1.7 million. The destroyers are also fitted with the Rolling Airframe missile, which cost $905,000 in 2022

Nothing of any note has been achieved in cost reduction since then, and the Houthis are repeatedly striking back, with at least four attacks on the USS Harry S Truman and its escorting vessels, forcing rapid expenditure of these expensive weapons, as well as disrupting US strikes. It is no surprise that their resistance is being downplayed by the US, but the reality is that the US is being forced to send a second carrier group, led by the USS Carl Vinson, to support the 5th Fleet strikes.

This does not bode well, with escalation looming, with a joint US strike on Iran likely. One can only think that, drunk with success regarding their overthrow of Assad in Syria, and forgetting their obvious failure to subdue either Hamas in Gaza, or Hezbollah in Lebanon, the US and Israel want to play the same game with Iran, using Yemen as the trigger, which is almost certainly a major miscalculation.

It as if they are the drunk guy in the casino, who rather than accept his losses, has taken one small win after a series of losses, and bet the house on the result. Iran is a major regional power, with a well-organized, equipped, and trained armed forces, backed by a much greater population than Iraq and Syria combined, and with its own fully developed and capable defense industry.

As for the Houthis, like all guerilla and national liberation forces, the case is that “If they are not losing, they are winning” but are they playing the smart long-term game, or are they at risk of overplaying their hand if this drags out too long? It might only take one incident of them attacking the wrong ship, hitting a neutral vessel and inflicting casualties, and the worldwide support they have garnered by their principled stand in support of the Palestinians, and their bravery in their David vs Goliath battle with Israel and the US, could disappear.

Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs

April 5, 2025 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , | 6 Comments

Five martyrs, wounded in US aggression in past hours: Yemen

Al Mayadeen | April 3, 2025

Al Mayadeen’s correspondent in Yemen reported that the number of US airstrikes on Saada Governorate has increased to 27 in the past 12 hours.

Today, reconnaissance aircraft from the US-led coalition targeted a civilian car in the Majz district of Saada governorate, following two airstrikes by warplanes on the same district.

Overnight Wednesday, US aircraft struck the Kitaf district and the Kahlan area, east of Saada governorate.

Alongside the ongoing aggression in Taiz, southern Yemen, Al Mayadeen’s correspondent reported that US aircraft also targeted the communications network in Jabal Namah, located in the Jablah district of Ibb Governorate in central Yemen.

In an interview with Al Mayadeen, Yemeni Health Ministry spokesperson Anis al-Asbahi reported that five people were killed, five others were injured, and one person went missing in airstrikes on Yemen over the past 24 hours. He emphasized that Yemenis are fully aware of the challenges they face and are prepared to confront them.

Yemen MoH reports 61 martyrs from US aggression

Al-Asbahi has confirmed to Al Mayadeen that the death toll from the US-led aggression on Sanaa and other governorates since mid-March has reached 61 martyrs and 139 wounded.

He also stated that since Yemen began its support operation for Gaza, the US-British-Israeli aggression has left 964 civilian casualties, including 250 martyrs.

This toll reflects data recorded up until April 1.

Since Yemen resumed its operations at sea and against occupied territories in response to the renewed Israeli aggression on Gaza, the United States has intensified its attacks on Yemen, conducting airstrikes on various governorates.

April 3, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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