Houthis in San'aa. Luke Somers/Demotix. All rights reserved.
The recently crowned King Salman of Saudi Arabia has taken a major gamble by launching ‘Operation Decisive Storm’, a campaign of air strikes in Yemen. Bringing together a military coalition of Arab countries, Riyadh has pledged ‘to do whatever it takes in order to protect the legitimate government of Yemen from falling’. The elected leader of Yemen, President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, has been ousted from power by a coalition of rebels headed by Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the leader of a group of Zaydi Shia tribesmen from the North of the country, and former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Saudi Arabia has been quick to point a finger at Iran, claiming that Tehran’s support for their Shia allies in Yemen, the Houthi movement, is directly responsible for the collapse of the transitional government formed after the deposal of President Saleh in the region-wide Arab revolutions of 2011. Riyadh has a point: the Houthis, mistrustful after decades of perceived discrimination and war against the Yemeni military and jihadi extremists, have been the biggest spoilers of the peace plan and transition process brokered by the United Nations and the regional Gulf Cooperation Council (of which Saudi Arabia is the leading member).
