Saudi war on Yemen Rising tensions in the Middle East and the crisis of Imperialism Hamid Alizadeh 31 March 2015 Since early Thursday morning hundreds of fighter jets from Saudi Arabia and a wide coalition of Arab states have been bombing targets across Yemen, killing dozens, destroying all major runways and much of the key infrastructure of the country. Yet again Yemen, which is the poorest Arab country, has become a target for savage attacks by the Saudi regime. Hundreds of civilians, many of whom children, have already been killed, but it is clear that this figure will dramatically rise as the targets of the attack are moving into the civilian populated areas in Sana’a and in the northern Houthi villages which are expected to be heavily bombed. This morning a refugee camp for internally displaced Yemenis was bombed, killing about 40 people and injuring 30. Apart from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, Morocco and Sudan were also sending aircraft, while Egypt and Jordan were preparing to take part in ground offensives if necessary. Oman is the only Gulf Arab state not participating. Apart from 100 fighter jets, Saudi Arabia has dedicated 150,000 soldiers to the campaign, amassing them on its long porous border with Yemen and threatening an even bloodier ground invasion. The United States and Britain have said they would not participate directly in the campaign, but that they will provide “logistical” and “intelligence” support. Israel has also openly supported the campaign. However, the EU has been vacillating, and although it did condemn the Houthi advance, it also said that the Saudi bombings have “dramatically worsened the already fragile situation in the country and risk having serious regional consequences". The Saudi Ambassador to the US said on Sunday that “ [t]his is a war to protect the people of Yemen and its legitimate government from a group that is allied and supported by Iran and Hezbollah," and later on he said: “we are doing this to protect Yemen." The level of hypocrisy is nauseating. The Saudi regime is killing thousands of people and destroying all the key infrastructure of this extremely poor country in order to... “protect it”! The protection of Yemen and its people have nothing to do with this imperialist adventure which has one main goal: to protect the Saudi ruling class and its narrow, petty interests in the Middle East, which are directly opposed to the poor and exploited people of the region. For years Saudi Arabia supported the former dictator of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was hated by his own people and finally overthrown during the Arab revolution. Then the Saudis, along with the rest of the dictators and despots of the Gulf states, manoeuvred to install into the presidency Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, who was a vice-president for 17 years before the revolution. However, after assuming power Hadi’s support quickly evaporated when the masses realised that corruption, nepotism and tribalism had remained in place, and that poverty and misery had become worse. Hadi also imposed harsh austerity measures on the population of which 60 percent already live in deep poverty. Thus, in order to rule, Hadi increasingly rested on different factions who dominated the different regions of Yemen. In particular he leaned on the tribal-Islamist Islah Party, while the Houthi tribal movement and the Zaydi people, who account for 40 percent of the population were marginalised as they had been for 60 years. It was in this context, that the Houthis could gain strength and take over large parts of the north. Their slogans against US imperialism, against corruption and against poverty and austerity resonated with the many impoverished youth, mainly in the north where the majority are Shias. By the time the Houthis took Sana’a the “legitimate president” Hadi did not have any base left and he was swept aside with ease and without much resistance. President Hadi and the Saudi Minister of Defece after Hadi's flight to Saudi ArabiaIn the South Hadi is not in much of a better position. Here he managed to whip up the wrath of the secessionist movement and push a layer of people into the arms of Islamist groups through his open cooperation with US imperialism and by allowing them to run a drone programme in the country. In the end Hadi’s last refuge was in the southern city of Aden towards which the Houthis were advancing. Saudi Arabia and Iran The Saudis could not accept the disintegration of Yemen and it falling into the hands of Iranian backed forces on its southern borders. Since the Iraq war, Iran has developed into the biggest threat to the position of Saudi Arabia in the region. This conflict has developed with rising tensions between Saudi and Iranian proxies in the region - tensions which have been pushed towards an increasingly sectarian character. While the Houthis are not fully in sync with Iran it is clear the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have been supporting them financially and militarily, as well as advising the Houthis on how to develop a political movement along the lines of Hizbollah in Lebanon. The Guards themselves claim to have 300-400 personnel in Yemen working with the Houthis. But for the Saudis the expansion of the influence of the Houthis represented a danger and they decided to make an example of them.. For years the competition between the Saudi regime and Iran has been going on in the corridors and through proxies - in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bahrain and more - but the attack on Yemen is a turning point. For the first time the conflict is being fought out openly - on Saudi Arabia's side at least. This is a sign of the enormous contradictions which have built up in the region. The carpet bombing of Yemen is a signal to Tehran of the capabilities of the Saudis. Saudi-US rift The American and British governments have also officially supported the campaign. Exposing the cynical and hypocritical nature of US imperialism, the Americans have been changing alliances in Yemen as if they were changing shirts. First they supported Saleh for more than 30 years, then they supported Hadi, then they found a way of working with the Houthis (in particular against Al Qaeda) and now find themselves on the other side of the barricades, again as partners in Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen and the Houthis. (No doubt this will massively benefit Al Qaeda as well). However, this does not change the fact that the Americans - who have historically been very close to the Saudis - were not informed of the attack which was decided and planned behind the backs of the US along with other formerly close allies of US imperialism such as Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan and Kuwait. In fact, for the Saudis the attack was also a show of strength towards the US. This was clearly expressed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said that the “Iran-Lausanne [read U.S.]-Yemen axis” must be stopped. This shows a deep mistrust which has developed amongst the traditional Middle Eastern allies of the US since the Iraq war, in that it is not doing enough to combat the rise of Ir anian influence. It is not by chance that the attack on Yemen comes just days before a deadline for the US to reach an agreement with Iran on the nuclear issue. The Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif said that the war in Yemen would not affect the negotiations. But it would be childish to believe him. Of course it will affect the negotiations, because the negotiations turn fundamentally around Iran's role in the Middle East and its relationship with US imperialism. US Iranian detente The competition between Saudi Arabia and Iran is not a new phenomenon. However, since the US invasion of Iraq tensions have been rising by the day. The occupation, by destroying Saddam’s state and armed forces, removed the biggest check for Iran and its army which was then free to intervene in the region. This posed a major threat to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States who would be extremely weak in the face of any advancing Iranian army. Even more crucially, however, room for manoeuvre for US imperialism was severely weakened by the defeat in Iraq along with the economic crisis - which was itself deepened by the wars - and the following demoralisation and mass opposition to the war inside the US. The Arab revolution and the changing mood of the masses placed even bigger barriers in the way of US military activity in the region. Unable to freely intervene militarily, US imperialism has increasingly had to rely on other powers - namely Iran - to defend its interests in the region. In Iraq the reliance of the US on Iran has been clear for many years. However, the rise of the Islamic State and the ensuing collapse of the Iraqi state has pushed the Americans closer to the Iranians. While the Kurds in the north have been able to push out the Islamic State from their territor y, it has been abundantly clear that the only reliable troops to fight IS in the rest of the country are the iranians. In Syria, the scenario is similar. Over the past two years, and in particular since last summer, the US has de facto been fighting on the side of the Assad regime against the different Islamist groups, in particular the Islamic state. The Gulf states, Turkey, Jordan and Yemen on the other hand, have been on the other side of the divide, supporting different sectarian groups in their fight against Assad, who is close to the Iranians.