The Houthis have threatened to attack specific targets in the UAE in retaliation for the UAE and Saudi airstrikes in Yemen
In the event, the response
of the Emiratis and their Saudi coalition partners was quick and harsh.
An airstrike on a telecommunications building late Thursday in the
port city of Hudaydah knocked out the internet and killed three children
playing football nearby. In a country wracked by food and medical
shortages and as Helen Lackner wrote last week a growing COVID crisis, the internet was out for four days before being finally restored on Tuesday.
At the same time a detention centre in the Houthi stronghold of Saada
was bombed killing at least 70 and wounding 130 according to Medicins Sans Frontieres;
and as the rubble is cleared the death toll continues to mount. The
centre appeared to be a holding facility for migrants so it is not at
all clear why it was targeted, while other sites including Houthi
military installations were not. And did such an attack not violate the rule of proportionality?
Lana Nusseibah, the Emirati ambassador
to the UN declined to address the question on Friday and focussed
instead on the 17 January strike carried out by the Houthis on Abu
Dhabi’s international airport and facilities of the state-owned energy
company ADNOC. She called it a terrorist attack and noted it had been
unanimously condemned by the UNSC. When pressed on the question of
proportionality she said “the coalition undertakes to abide by
international law and proportionate response in all its military
operations.” And she referred to a statement released on Saturday by the coalition denying it was responsible.
The Houthis struck back
on Monday with ballistic missiles aimed at Abu Dhabi and the Saudi
cities of Dhahran in Eastern Province and Jizan on the southern Red Sea
coast. And while defence systems worked well in both countries in taking
out the missiles and the Emiratis also tallied the destruction of a
Houthi missile launch site at Al Jawf in northern Yemen, the wide
geographical reach, from the Red Sea over to the Persian Gulf, will be
concerning to the coalition. As will, for the Emiratis in particular but
the Saudis too (as they pour billions into building a tourism
industry,) the Houthi threat which we noted last week to target the
facilities of international companies.
As with other Emirati officials Ambassador Nusseibah was careful not
to point any finger of blame at Iran, though in all likelihood both the
drones and the ballistic missiles used in the subsequent Houthi attack
were, if not of Iranian manufacture, than supplied directly or otherwise
by the Iranians.
But naming and shaming Iran at this delicate juncture of the JCPOA
discussions in Vienna would run counter to Gulf efforts, led by the
Emiratis and the Saudis to come to some sort of an accommodation with
Tehran should the US reach a deal that does not address Gulf anxieties
about Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal.
Which rather begs the question what are the Iranians up to? For the
Houthis it’s clear: don’t push into Marib and do not make the mistake of
thinking that your multi-billion dollar missile defence systems are
invincible.
As for Iran it may be the message that it can at any time of its
choosing use its proxies in Yemen, in Syria via Hezbollah and in Iraq
with the Popular Mobilization Forces to threaten those it deems to be a
threat with the sort of asymmetric warfare at which it has excelled in
all three countries over many years. The Iranians may think, too, that
with the world fixated on the Ukraine crisis now is a good time to
rattle its adversaries and push for advantageous terms in the JCPOA
talks in Vienna. Of course the alternative scenario is that the Houthis
are freelancing the attacks without any guidance or instructions from
Tehran.