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How Gulf security is linked to other global issues
Houthi rebels attacking the UAE and Saudi counter-attacks are vivid evidence of Tehran’s regional influence at an unusually sensitive time. With international tensions mounting over Russian plans for Ukraine and the eighth round of Iranian nuclear talks being held in Vienna there is significant overlap between global issues and Middle East security.
That is the unavoidable conclusion when trying to analyze the connections between the recent Houthi drone and missile strikes on Abu Dhabi and deliberate threats to the UAE’s reputation as an oasis of economic stability and as safe investment location.
The Houthis, an Iranian-backed group that controls Sana’a and northern Yemen, claimed responsibility. While one may question whether the Houthis are a direct proxy of Iran, what is clear is that they get their missiles, drones, training, help in with unmanned aerial vehicles and other weapons from Tehran’s Quds Forces and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Another Iranian-aligned group in Iraq, Kata’ib Hezbollah, praised the Houthi attacks, with its leader, Abu Ali al-Askari, saying: “God was able to strike fear in the hearts of Bin Zayeds by the hands of the mujahideen and brave people of Yemen.”
Since 2015 the Houthis have been fighting a coalition led by Saudi Arabia, and including the UAE, which invaded Yemen to depose them. A week before the missile attack, the Houthis launched a drone attack on Abu Dhabi’s airport and an nearby industrial area. Three South Asian workers are reported to have died as a result.
Had Dubai airport been hit as planned, many civilians, including Americans, could also have been killed. President Joe Biden’s national security advisor reiterated the US position on the “terrorist attack in Abu Dhabi”. Americans were advised not to travel to the UAE after a Houthi spokesman warned that they would attack the site of Dubai Expo, which announced it had welcomed more than 10m visitors in the four months it has been open.
That unprecedented attack triggered a wave of Saudi and Emirati air strikes in Yemen, many of which killed civilians. The deadliest, on January 21st, hit a prison in Saada, a northern city. Médecins Sans Frontières, a medical charity, said at least 82 people were killed.
Tensions have soared in recent weeks after the UAE-backed Giants Brigade drove the Houthis out of Shabwa province, undermining their months-long campaign to take the key city of Marib farther north.
Yemen’s civil war has been a catastrophe for millions of its citizens who have fled their homes, with many close to famine in what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The UN estimates that the war killed 377,000 people by the end of 2021, both directly and indirectly through hunger and disease.
In Baghdad, where several rounds of talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia had been held in the past year, speculation about the attacks in the UAE was swirling. Late last year, the head of Emirati intelligence, Tahnoon bin Zayed, visited Iran to try to establish trade ties, after years of boycotting Tehran.
Analysts note rightly that the US must do more to reinforce its sense of determination. Vladimir Putin was able to take advantage of Barack Obama’s reluctance to intervene militarily in Syria, despite his “red line” about Assad’s use of chemical weapons.
Putin, Xi Jinping and Khameini have all obviously noticed the passivity of the Biden administration, painfully visible during last summer’s chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan. European governments haven’t performed any better either.
As is also clear, Israel is trying to take advantage of this alarming escalation with repeated public warnings that it will in no way support the easing of international sanctions against Iran in case the Vienna negotiations fail to deliver a new deal to revive the JCPoA.
“The Iranian regime is weak,” the Israeli premier Naftali Bennett said last week. “If the Americans give Iran access to the money that was frozen, they’ll run into this money in the form of terror attacks in Iraq, in Syria, in the Emirates. This is not the way to behave when dealing with a bully. The Americans have a strong hand, but they are acting as if they have a weak hand. That is the message that we relay to them. Some of them listen.”
The latest Houthi missile attack on the UAE came as Isaac Herzog, the Israeli president was visiting Abu Dhabi to discuss future relations and common strategic interests in the wake of the Abraham Accords.
Dennis Ross, an experienced policy adviser to Bill Clinton, wrote the other day: “Rarely has it been more important for an American administration to show it will stand by a friend in response to an attack that could have resulted in many civilian casualties, including Americans. It is not just our friends who need to see this but those who seem so determined to challenge the United States and our desire to shape an international order. It is essential to counteract the perception of our risk-aversion and demonstrate that their actions are making us more risk-ready. Deterrence demands nothing less.’”
The most recent flare-up is the southern Gulf is a painful reminder that Middle Eastern security is linked by multiple factors to wider global escalations.
BY: IAN BLACK
