Saudi Arabia is badly bogged down in Yemen, which for the past four-and-a-half years has thwarted the designs of the regime in Riyadh to browbeat it into submission through the most intense bombing the world has seen in this century that has resulted in the death of almost a hundred thousand men, women, and children, in addition to the destruction of the infrastructure of the Arab World’s most poorest country.

Stay with us for an article in this regard on the ‘Lobe.Log’ site, titled: “MBS’ Yemen Quandary”.

The author is Thomas W. Lippman, a Washington-based author and journalist who has written about West Asian affairs and American foreign policy for more than four decades, specializing in US-Saudi relations. In 2003 he was the principal writer on the war in Iraq for the daily ‘Washington Post’.

The recent decision by the United Arab Emirates to withdraw most of its invading troops from Yemen is unlikely to end the multiple conflicts raging in that unhappy country, but it could have wider implications for relations between the UAE and its most important regional partner, Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia, in the person of Heir Apparent Mohamed bin Salman, or MBS, is committed to the war against the popular Ansarallah Movement defending Yemen, and is usually identified as the leader of the “coalition” conducting the long-running operation. But it is the UAE that has been doing most of the fighting on the ground; the Saudis have limited themselves almost entirely to air strikes.

Even with the UAE fully on board, the Saudis are no closer to achieving their aims than they were when they intervened in the Yemen conflict over four years ago. Now they remain committed to the campaign but lack their most important tool for waging it.

UAE officials have said that the withdrawal decision has been under discussion for some time and that the Saudis were on board with it, and so far the Saudis have not said otherwise, at least publicly. But it is hard to escape the conclusion that the UAE withdrawal has left Saudi Arabia to play a much weaker hand.

A recent report in the New York Times put it bluntly: “While the Saudis have fought almost entirely from the air, the Emiratis, seasoned by years of combat alongside the American military in Afghanistan and elsewhere, led virtually every successful ground advance. Behind the scenes, Emirati officers, weapons and money played an equally critical role in holding together a fractious alliance of mutually hostile Yemeni militias, which have already begun jostling to fill the power vacuum left by the Emiratis. The Emirati drawdown has also severely weakened the Saudis’ bargaining power, raising the potential cost to MBS of any negotiations to end the disastrous war.

Nevertheless, former U.S. ambassador to Yemen Gerald Feierstein predicted recently that the Saudis “will carry on their campaign regardless of what the Emiratis or the United States do” because they believe they have no alternative.

The Saudis believe that the conflict with Yemen’s popular Ansarallah Movement is a war of necessity, not a war of choice. The intransigent Saudis, whose resources are being drained, are not prepared to tolerate an independent Yemen, although they cannot stop the regular targeting of Saudi airports and oil/industrial installations through radar escaping missiles and drones.

As recently as May, after meeting in Washington with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and White House National Security Advisor John Bolton, the UAE’s minister of foreign affairs, Abdullah bin Zayed Aal-e Nahyan, gave no indication that his country was preparing to retreat either from the war against the Ansarallah Movement or from the separate conflict in central Yemen against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Now, however, the Emiratis say they need to redeploy some of their forces back home since they have trained enough Yemeni soldiers that the Yemenis can carry more of the burden.

While the UAE and Saudi Arabia have supported different factions in the complicated Yemeni conflict, they have otherwise been acting in policy lockstep all around the region, especially against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Mohamed bin Zayed or MBZ, the Heir Apparent to his elder brother Sheikh Khalifa of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, has been a mentor and friend to his equally reckless Saudi counterpart, MBS.

Together they were the architects of the boycott imposed on neighboring Qatar by their countries, along with Egypt and Bahrain. And they have been united in financial support for the autocratic Egyptian regime of Abdel Fattah as-Sisi. The boycott of Qatar, like the Yemen campaign, has not only failed to achieve its goal of forcing Qatar to turn on the organization known as the Muslim Brotherhood, it has driven Qatar into closer economic cooperation with Iran. Nor has Qatar shut down the cable news network al-Jazeera or expelled a Turkish military contingent, as the Saudis and the Emiratis demanded.

The boycott disrupted family life, work patterns, and air travel all around the Persian Gulf, but the Qataris soon adjusted. They substituted goods from Turkey and Iran for products they used to buy from Saudi Arabia, and are carrying on their lucrative natural gas export business as before. The only substantive accomplishment of the boycott has been the all-but-official breakup of the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council, a grouping of the six sheikhdoms on the Arab side of the Persian Gulf aimed at fostering trade and economic integration.

With the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain united in boycotting Qatar, the two remaining members, Kuwait and Oman, have been left to futile efforts to heal the breach.

Nine months have passed since Pompeo called for an end to the war in Yemen. The United States, he said, “calls on all parties to support UN Special Envoy Martin Griffiths in finding a peaceful solution to the conflict in Yemen based on the agreed references.”

Griffith is still at work, looking for some political formula that could bring an end to the war, but he has failed so far because none of the combatants has been damaged enough to feel compelled to settle. Now the pressure on Saudi Arabia to find some face-saving exit can only increase.

After over four years of what was supposed to be a quick war against the Ansarallah Movement, there is no indication of success. Saudi armed forces have never ventured into Yemen, and whatever casualties they have suffered were in the attacks launched by the Yemenis across their northern borders.

The Emiratis and several thousand Sudanese mercenary troops have done most of the fighting on the ground, and according to military analysts Saudi pilots avoid anti-aircraft fire by flying at altitudes the guns can’t reach—which unfortunately leads to inaccurate targeting and to civilian casualties.

The UAE’s reduced commitment to the war in Yemen may not presage any larger breach between MBZ and MBS. But if it does, it could force the headstrong MBS to rearrange Saudi Arabia’s positions all around the region. If he can’t count on MBZ to stand with him, who else is there?

Beware of Saudi Plot to Desecrate Sanctity of Mecca for Villifying Ansarallah

By: Kayhan Int’l

A poisonous piece of propaganda circulating these days on the social media and the press and news networks affiliated to the Wahhabis, the Zionists and western imperialists, is the alleged attempt by Yemen’s defenders to target Islam’s holiest city, Mecca.
Nothing could be far from the truth. These preposterous lies are being spread by the Saudi regime in a vain bid to stoke sectarian tensions in Muslim countries, and to try to tarnish the Islamic image of Yemen’s popular Ansarallah Movement.
Frustrated at its failure to bomb the Yemeni Muslims into submission despite killing over 40,000 men, women and children over the past four years and two months, in addition to destroying the infrastructure of the Arab world’s poorest country, the regime in Riyadh is releasing unsubstantiated reports of its air force protecting the sanctity of holy Mecca by shooting down projectiles aimed at the city which houses the Sacred Ka’ba – the symbolic House of God.
In this way, the regime intends to deflect attention from the inability of its US-supplied costly air defense system to detect and intercept the missiles and drones fired with pinpoint precision by the Yemeni forces at military and industrial targets in Saudi Arabia in retaliation for Riyadh’s growing crimes against Islam and humanity.
Fortunately, world Muslims, except for the naïve and the knaves who slavishly serve the Saudis, have dismissed such allegations for obvious reasons.
Fully aware of the history of Hijaz, the Land of Divine Revelation, where the Almighty’s Last and Greatest Messenger was born, grew up, married, preached the universal message of Islam for 23 years, and passed away from the mortal world at the age of 63, every true Muslim, whether Sunni or Shi’a, knows that on Divine Commandment Prophet Muhammad (SAWA) bequeathed for the guidance of mankind, the Thaqalayn (Two Invaluable Things), that is, God’s Revealed Word, the holy Qur’an, and his own Infallible Progeny the Ahl al-Bayt who are hailed by the Heavenly Scripture as pristinely pure and spotlessly clean from any blemish.
The Ummah is also well informed that the heritage of the Seal of Messengers in the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina, in the form of mosques, shrines, and other edifices associated with him, his progeny, and his companions, was perfectly preserved by Muslims for over a millennium and three centuries, until desecrated, demolished and totally destroyed by the heretical Wahhabi cult led by the Najdi Saudi clan, which is in occupation of Hijaz since 1925, when with British help Abdul-Aziz massacred tens of thousands of Muslims, including those who had sought asylum at the Prophet’s shrine in Medina and at the holy Ka’ba in Mecca.
For the pilgrims to the holy land, especially those who frequently visit it, it is a shocking scene that every year the regime is erasing the traces of whatever religious and historical structures that had survived since London created the spurious entity called Saudi Arabia in 1932.
It is also not hidden from Muslims that the Saudi clan, which is of Jewish origin, is now openly dallying with the Zionist regime and has recently given Israel use of its airspace, while the Ansarallah Movement led by the al-Houthi family, whose descent from Prophet Muhammad (SAWA) is historically documented, is strongly opposed to the domination of Islamic lands, Hijaz in particular, by the Americans and the Zionists.
Moreover, in contrast to the Wahhabi cult, the Zaydi branch of Shi’a Muslims who for a thousand years till the mid1960s had ruled most of Yemen with people’s support, and who presently form the legal national government in Sana’a, have always respected the sanctity of the Sacred Ka’ba and the shrines of the Prophet and his Immaculate Ahl al-Bayt.  
Thus, in view of these undeniable realities, the question arises: Why would the defenders of Yemen target Mecca and undermine their own fundamental beliefs, when their drones and missiles are playing havoc with Saudi military and industrial installations?
The answer is crystal clear. The Saudi seditionists are spreading such lies, which warrants the Ummah to be alert to the possibility of a frustrated Wahhabi regime, in a bid to avert total humiliation at the hands of the Yemenis, bombing Mecca or Medina and killing Muslims, to put blame on the Ansarallah.
Remember, the Saudis have a sordid record of massacring Hajj pilgrims every few years without any regard for Divine Commandments on respect for the Guests of God and the inviolable sanctity of the Holy Land.