Posted on 06/11/2018 11:57:17 AM PDT by Simon Green
I’m assuming there’s a downside to this.
Lots of American mercs...just say’in
See how happy and carefree muslim ruled countries are?
The Saudis better get used to trench warfare against a committed enemy.
They will one day have to fight for their lives against Iran.
Yemen is child’s play in comparison.
Hodeida is the main port through which Iran (or anyone else) can supply their local allies/surrogates, who have been trying to take over Yemen.
Hodeida, and the Capital city of Sana’a, are the main strategic targets remaining to effectively defeat Iran’s ambition of controlling Yemen.
When Hodeida falls (as seems likely), it will accelerate what is already a rapid pushback of the Iranian-backed Houthis, who conducted a coup and nearly captured all the main ports and cities in the country in 2014. It will likely be the decisive engagement of the war, as it is the main port for the capital, and the main source of armament and revenue for the Iranian-backed Houthis.
UAE-backed forces have cleared up the coast from the South, securing the naval choke point (Bab el Mandab) at the Southern end of the Red Sea, where 12% of the world’s shipping passes, and more of it’s oil. They are now moving to encircle the port city of Hodeida, and are within artillery range, with a supporting Naval task force offshore.
Since the Houthis took this important port and the Capital City in 2014 (not long after Obama provided money to the Iranian regime), this war has inflicted exceptional deprivation on the civilian population, compounded by disease outbreaks.
The collapse of Iranian surrogates in the wider region has been a significant development, since President Trump withdrew from the Iran deal, and the Treasury Department raided the bank accounts that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps used to fund its surrogates.
Our Regional allies, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE had military offensives prepared to strike (apparently coordinated), in both Syria and Yemen, which have pretty dramatically altered the military situation in both countries. The elections in Iraq during this time, has also resulted in an ongoing effort to block out Iranian-backed groups from the next Iraqi Government.
The Houthis are like the Rohingya in Burma. Iran-funded and equipped, they started the trouble. Now it’s a humanitarian problem that they are getting theirs.
I wonder how many Iranian special ops were killed. They are 100% behind this violent “uprising.”
You put boots on the ground in Yemen, your gonna step in lots of shiite.
Play stupid games....
Meddlers Without Borders have no standing in the prosecution of a war. If they get in the way, they become enemy and can be captured or killed.
What they want is irrelevant
Saudis were recruiting mercs in Colombia earlier this year. Bonus sign ups..big bucks..lots of promises. I told a friend’s son to back away fast.
Like Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria it's a testing ground and training exercise.
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The Yeminia/Saudi war is never covered. People know as much about Yemen as Gary Johnson knows about Aleppo. Hundreds killed. No biggie. Ten thousand killed? Who cares. But if Israeli’s nail an arab trying to break down the border wall it’s headline news throughout the world and the UN calls for a world emergency.
Thanks for your post. Could I go so far as to say this is a Sunni/shia proxy war( Saudi’s vs Iran) or is there more to this?
“Could I go so far as to say this is a Sunni/Shia proxy war( Saudi’s vs Iran)”
Sunni/Shia is a big part of it, but both Iran and the previous Saudi jihadi surrogates (like ISIS) have wider aspirations, even though they hate each other the most. In Yemen, it is more directly Iran vs. Saudi Arabia/UAE (political). In Syria or Iran it is relatively more Sunni vs Shia (sectarian) - but in every case Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has a commanding role on the Shia side..
Across the region, the Iranian/Shi’ite side is much more centrally commanded by the Iranian regime. On the Sunni side, many of the jihadi groups have gone off on their own, and are only loosely influenced by the Saudi Government. Many of them were self-generated based in the Wahabbi doctrine, but never under direct Saudi control.
In Yemen though, the Sunni side are directly operated by the Saudi and UAE Governments, as regular military forces (albeit with many foreign mercenary troops).
In Yemen, the Houthis are a variety of Shi’ite that is pretty far from the Iranians - almost Sunni. They are really more a political/military proxy of the Iranian Government, than a religious/ideological one. To a large degree, the Houthis had a long term political grievance within Yemen, and just took Iranian support, because they were the only ones who would support them.
The Houthi/Iranian side also employs a bunch of foreign mercenaries (albeit lower skilled black African mercs, versus the relatively high-end mercs the UAE and Saudis hire, like Columbians and Morrocans in the rank and file, with Western and South African advisers).
“Meddlers Without Borders”
Touché.
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