Posted on 03/26/2015 9:39:22 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
(CNN)Saudi and allied warplanes struck rebels in Yemen on Thursday, with Saudi Arabia threatening to send ground troops and inserting itself into its southern neighbor's civil war, potentially opening up a broader sectarian conflict in the Middle East.
The swift and sudden action involved 100 Saudi jets, 30 from the United Arab Emirates, 15 each from Kuwait and Bahrain, 10 from Qatar, and a handful from Jordan, Morocco and Sudan, plus naval help from Pakistan and Egypt, according to a Saudi adviser.
The Egyptian state news agency on Thursday quoted Egypt's Foreign Ministry as saying Egypt's support also could involve ground forces.
What do those countries have in common? They're all predominantly Sunni Muslim -- in contrast to the Houthi rebels, Shiite Muslims who have taken over Yemen's capital of Sanaa and on Wednesday captured parts of its second-largest city, Aden. The Saudis consider the Houthis proxies for the Shiite government of Iran and fear another Shiite-dominated state in the region.
"What they do not want is an Iranian-run state on their southern border," CNN military analyst Lt. Col. Rick Francona said of the Saudis.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
You obviously have not spent time in Yemen.
Saudi Arabia goes to war
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/nov/23/saudi-arabia-yemen-houthi-war
23 November 2009
A crucially important conflict, woefully under-reported in the west, has now come to a head in the Middle East. In response to an ongoing fight that could spill out beyond the Arabian peninsula, Saudi Arabia has entered into direct war with the Houthi rebels in northern Yemen.
Saudi military intervention marks the first time in the kingdom’s history that its army has crossed its borders without an ally. Previously, the kingdom engaged only in proxy wars. The Saudis used royalist Yemenis to fight Nasser’s Egypt in the 1960s, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein to fight Iran in the 1980s, and the US to fight Iraq in the 1990s.
Indeed, Saudi Arabia has fought every “ism” that has sought to dominate the Middle East, including Nasser’s pan-Arabism, communism, and today’s Islamism of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, the terrorism of al-Qaida and the Shi’ism of Iran. The tools it relied upon were oil money and Wahhabi Islam. During the 1980s, Saudi Arabia spent more than $75bn on the propagation of Wahhabi doctrine, funding schools, mosques, and charities across the Islamic world in an effort to bolster its influence.
“...potentially opening up a broader sectarian conflict in the Middle East.”
Well, it looks like giving Donkey Ears the Peace Prize BEFORE he had ever done anything was the wise choice. Waiting until AFTER his presidency would have been catastrophic to the plan.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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Related threads
Given your experience with Yemen's E&P efforts, would fracking have made a difference re keeping output up?
What’s ironic is that Yemen’s oil production began its decline just as oil prices started to skyrocket.
I suspect Hydraulic Fracturing has already been used in Yemen.
Yemen's low oil production revolves around limited infrastructure, civil unrest and relatively poor plays for oil.
Must be galling, being located right next to the mother lode. So near, yet so far.
If Saddam had brushed past the lightly-armed Airborne troops airlifted to the area after his invasion of Kuwait, he could have owned all of those oil resources. He obviously wasn't thinking big enough.
In contrast, the Iranis have targeted the West less -- the radicals still need to be killed, but let's face facts -- being pally with the Saudis have gotten us nowhere
What should be done is to let both sides fight it out -- the Iranis will be on par with the Saudis and then we can have a fantastic Sunni-Shia war, with the rest of the world looking on the side-lines.
Let them kill each other and if one side looks like it is winning, then the US should sell weapons to the other side so that they have their hundred year war.
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