The Civil War in Yemen; The Role and Impact of Iran and Hezbollah Lebanon

The military operations of Saudi Arabia in Yemen began on April 6, 2015, with extensive airstrikes under the name "Operation Decisive Storm" led by a coalition of nine Arab countries. Following this, from May 2 of the same year, it continued under the name "Operation Restore Hope." The real objective of this military intervention was to steer the Yemeni civil war in favor of the government of Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the elected president of Yemen, which was formed by striking the positions of Houthi militants and loyalists of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, and Sudan, which are members of the coalition, are supported to varying degrees by the United States, Britain, Canada, Turkey, China, and Germany, and also receive logistical support from Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia, and France. The formal goal of Riyadh for this military intervention was to respond to the threat posed by the Islamic Republic, which emerged from the Houthis along Saudi Arabia's southern borders. In this context, the Islamic Republic and Hezbollah Lebanon have also been accused of supporting and sending weapons to the Houthi fighters (Ansar Allah movement), and several Saudi officials have claimed that their military's involvement in Yemen is to prevent Yemen from becoming a base for the Islamic Republic and to defend Saudi national security. Saudi Arabia's military intervention has led to humanitarian disasters, and the organization of the war by Saudi Arabia and the execution of "Operation Decisive Storm," which after 27 days of mainly aerial bombardments escalated into naval and ground conflicts, indicates that Saudi political planners and military strategists believed they would achieve their goals in Yemen in a short time and would subdue the Houthis. However, after nearly 28 months of air bombardment, naval blockade, and ground wars, not only has the war in Yemen not ended, but it has plunged this poorest Arab country into one of the worst humanitarian disasters. According to the United Nations, apart from unprecedented structural and inhumane damage to Yemen, 80% of the 19 million population of this country urgently needs humanitarian aid, and more than 3 million of its residents have been displaced. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in its latest statement in early June of this year stated that 9.6 million Yemeni children need assistance, and hunger and famine are rampant in this country. Currently, most provinces and cities in western Yemen, including Sana'a, are under the control of the Houthi Revolutionary Committee/Supreme Political Council. Supporters of Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi are mainly stationed in provinces located along the Gulf of Aden, including the port of Aden and some eastern provinces, while "Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" has taken root in significant parts of the eastern country, especially in the provinces of Al-Bayda and Hadhramaut. The position of the Islamic Republic is that Saudi officials consider their military intervention in Yemen as a response to a threat posed by the Houthis on behalf of the Islamic Republic along Saudi Arabia's southern border with Yemen. According to these officials, Iran wants to turn the Houthis into Hezbollah of Yemen. Iranian officials describe their support for the Houthis as political and diplomatic and deny military assistance to them. Commanders of the IRGC and the army have also severely criticized Saudi Arabia, calling its military intervention in Yemen "fratricide," "Muslim killing," "oppression of the innocent," "a plot of global arrogance," and "a strategic mistake," while praising the Houthis for their "resistance and courage." Brigadier General Pourdastan, the then commander of the army's ground forces, dismissed Saudi claims that the Islamic Republic is part of the Yemen crisis and that Iran sends weapons to Yemen as "baseless." Brigadier General Salami, the deputy commander of the IRGC, also stated: "The Houthis do not need our presence at all in terms of military equipment and training." Despite this, credible information and reports question the validity of these statements. An analytical website, "War on the Rocks," in the U.S. has concluded from examining news reports from Gulf Arab countries and Yemen that in the past two years, 44 members of the IRGC and Hezbollah Lebanon have been killed or captured in Yemen. This is while these two organizations, except for issuing some vague statements, have refrained from any official comments regarding their operations and casualties in Yemen. The site reported the composition of the dead and captured as follows: in 2015, 10 IRGC members and 9 Hezbollah members; in 2016, 5 IRGC members and 5 Hezbollah members; and from January to April 2017, 8 IRGC members and 7 Hezbollah members. According to this site, the Islamic Republic's support for the Houthis aims to besiege the Arabian Peninsula and provide covert assistance to Shiite dissident groups to continue their struggle against Sunni governments and establish regimes inclined towards Iran. "In the past two years, Iran has supported terrorist groups tasked with killing government officials and destroying key infrastructure in Kuwait and the UAE, and in addition, the arrest of Iran-backed groups in Bahrain has also increased." Initially, Iran had a high return on low investment in the Houthis, but conditions have now changed. At the beginning of the Yemeni civil war, as the report's authors have stated, the focus of IRGC and Hezbollah advisors was on training and arming the Houthis, and they refrained from direct involvement in the conflict. IRGC and Hezbollah training camps were established in locations far from conflict areas, which is why their casualties were low, and their presence appeared minimal. However, with the fall of the Yemeni army in September 2014, Al-Qaeda took advantage of the existing vacuum and, through political and military alliances with Sunni tribal militants in northern, central, and eastern Yemen, dealt the first blow to Hezbollah in the months before the start of "Operation Decisive Storm" led by Saudi Arabia in March 2015. On March 8, 2015, one of Hezbollah's commanders announced the death of eight of his fighters in the Yemen war. Three weeks later, anti-Houthi tribal militants announced that they had captured three IRGC officers and one Hezbollah member who were fighting alongside Houthi forces in the provinces of Aden and Shabwa. The mentioned site notes that the number of killed and captured members of Hezbollah and the IRGC in Yemen has now increased, stating that recently 15 Hezbollah and IRGC advisors were killed during a series of air operations and the capture of Houthi bases. "While the number of IRGC and Hezbollah casualties in Yemen is not comparable to the casualties of these organizations in Syria and Iraq, the increase in this number indicates the expansion of their presence and activities in the Arabian Peninsula." The casualties of the IRGC in the first six months of this year have more than doubled compared to last year. As the "War on the Rocks" site reports, in February of this year, airstrikes by the coalition countries killed five IRGC advisors and one missile officer known as "Afghani" in the Saada province in northern Yemen. In March, the Islamic Republic sent more Afghan advisors selected from among the militants dispatched from Iran to Syria to assist the Houthis in Yemen. Since May 2015, the Houthis have carried out more missile and artillery attacks against Saudi Arabia and forces loyal to Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi from the border province of Saada, which is why airstrikes by Saudi Arabia and other coalition countries have increasingly targeted this province. This province is the center of the Ansar Allah movement's activities. As the governor of Saada, Hadi Tarshan Al-Waili, announced in February of this year, the number of IRGC advisors in this province has doubled. According to the "War on the Rocks" website, several captured Houthi field commanders have confirmed that IRGC advisors oversee the repair and maintenance and use of ballistic missiles of Houthi missile units. In addition to this work, these IRGC members and several Hezbollah members have established training courses for the Houthis in Saada on targeting methods, navigation, and map reading. Yemeni forces loyal to Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and Saudi forces have frequently seized Iranian military equipment from captured Houthis in northern Yemen. Nearly eight months ago, in early December 2016, a Houthi commander named Abu Zahra was captured in the Hajjah province, and government forces found a booklet in Persian among his equipment that contained information about setting up electronic compasses made by the Islamic Republic's Ministry of Defense. This commander later admitted that he had participated in a mapping course at an Islamic Republic training center in Sana'a. The acquisition of military booklets in Persian by Yemeni government and Saudi forces has occurred while the construction of Islamic Republic schools and the establishment of cultural centers of this regime in northern Yemen has increased. According to Reuters, the Islamic Republic increased its support for the Houthis in the second half of 2016 by sending various weapons, including small-caliber weapons and missiles. U.S. officials believe that the weapons are mainly sent through Oman, and in this regard, a senior U.S. government official told Reuters: "We are concerned about the shipment of weapons from Iran to Yemen, and therefore we have informed countries that have relations with the Houthis, including Oman, of our concerns." Oman denied the claim of sending weapons to the Houthis from its territory, but Yemeni officials told Reuters that Oman is not actively involved in smuggling weapons to the Houthis but is lax and refrains from taking decisive action against smugglers. Despite this, the "War on the Rocks" site reports that in recent months, pressure on the Islamic Republic to keep its support lines to the Houthis open has increased. The Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia has made significant efforts to cut Iran's maritime support lines to the Houthis through Yemen's western coasts. The forces of the Arab coalition have seized three Yemeni ports and two archipelagos of this country in the Red Sea to prevent Iran from using these islands to send weapons. Iran's connection to Yemen through the coastal province of Al-Hudaydah in the Red Sea has also been limited through the joint cooperation of Saudi forces and Yemeni government forces. These forces are expected to execute a joint operation to take control of the port city of Al-Hudaydah and the small fishing ports of this province. However, several human rights organizations have questioned the execution of the operation and are not sure that the aforementioned forces can achieve their goals in a short time and address the humanitarian consequences of such operations. These forces are also making extensive efforts to block the land routes used by Iran in Yemen for arms smuggling. One of these routes, which leads from Oman to the Al-Mahrah province, a coastal province bordering Oman on the Gulf of Aden, splits into two branches. One branch leads northwest to the northern province of Marib, and the other turns southwest to the coastal province of Shabwa on the Gulf of Aden. Coalition forces have discovered and seized quantities of weapons, ammunition, and several drones by establishing checkpoints along the northern route towards Marib. Simultaneously, Yemeni government forces have also taken control of the southern route leading to Shabwa through similar actions. With these actions, it is anticipated that these transportation routes and arms shipments will be blocked. Regarding the drones, experts from the "War Studies Center" in Britain concluded in a detailed report that in October 2016 and February 2017, they examined seven drones and one drone engine seized by Emirati forces involved in the Yemen war, concluding that the mentioned drones were transported to Yemen through Oman. In late February of this year, Houthi fighters displayed four drones named Qasef-1, claiming that they had built these drones themselves. However, investigations by the aforementioned center have shown that the mentioned drones are one of the types of Ababil-2 made in Iran. The IRGC, Hezbollah, and naval operations: The "War on the Rocks" site reports that in January 2017, seven months ago, Yemeni government forces conducted a coastal offensive operation named "Golden Sword" with the help of Sunni tribal militants and Emirati special forces against Hezbollah. In January and March of this year, Yemeni government forces and militants captured seven Hezbollah advisors in the provinces of Taiz and Marib. The number of Hezbollah members captured in the first three months of this year exceeds the total number of this organization's captured members in 2016. During these operations, several small ports in the coastal province of Taiz in the Red Sea and near the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait were captured by Yemeni government forces. The capture of these ports has slowed down the arms smuggling process from Iran, limited the Houthis' mining activities at sea, and suppressed Houthi missile attacks against American and Saudi ships.