Even as President Barack Obama struggles to get Iran to renounce, or at least substantially delay, acquisition of nuclear weapons, Tehran’s archenemy Saudi Arabia is nudging him into a war by default in Yemen, where tribal politics are far more convoluted than in Iraq and Syria.
Although the Saudis have presented their aerial bombing of Yemen as valiant support for US efforts to weaken Iranian influence in the Gulf region, this is not a credible explanation. Tehran did not put much money, materiel or military advice into the rise of Houthis earlier this year.
Their uprising was born of protests against Hadi’s oppression of their sect. However, Iran might intervene covertly now after the Saudi intervention. Washington is not part of the Saudi-led Sunni Arab coalition against Yemen but is providing intelligence, targeting and logistical support.
This is a short end of the stick that could draw in Washington, especially if the Saudi’s falter against the ferocious Yemenis.
About 70% of Yemen’s people are Sunni Muslims but most have fought Saudi tribes and kings for centuries alongside minorities from offshoots of Shia Islam in the rugged northern regions.
At a political level beyond the Sunni-Shia religious divide, the Saudi intervention lends to comparison with Russia’s Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine, except that he did not go as far.
Putin covertly sent irregular forces into Crimea and East Ukraine to prevent alleged Western influence in Kiev after his protégé President Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia and was deposed in 2013.
In contrast, the Saudi air force has intervened overtly to prevent allegedly Iranian backed Houthi tribesmen from definitively ousting Sunni protégé President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi who fled to Saudi Arabia last week. Riyadh said it was responding to Hadi’s request for help.
The most significant precedent for a government acting militarily after receiving a request for help was that of the Soviet Union, when it entered Afghanistan in 1979 and installed Babrak Kamal as the leader of its puppet regime.
Soviet domination was designed to defeat insurgent Mujahidin comprising mainly Sunni and Shia Islamic fundamentalists backed by Pakistan and Tehran. They were composed of Sunni tribal fighters trained in Pakistan and armed and financed by the US, Britain and Saudi Arabia. Iran funded and trained the Shia fighters.
The wars ended in early 1989 with Soviet withdrawal leaving nearly 1.5 million dead and millions in refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran. Then the Taliban, who favored an extremist version of Sunni Islam propagated by Saudi clerics, conquered Afghanistan with covert Pakistani help. The US invasion after 9/11 defeated them but that country is still in chaos.
It is too early to say whether Saudi intervention in Yemen will be as disastrous but the portents are negative. The Saudis are far less skilled than the US military, which failed to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan or prevent chaos in Syria and Libya despite vast means, smart weapons and intelligence sources.
Worse, Yemen is already a stronghold of extremist al Qaeda fighters and is coveted by the Islamic State. Although Sunni, both are enemies of the Saudi regime. Many Yemenis, especially from the rugged northern areas bordering Saudi Arabia are also resolute hereditary enemies of Saudi tribes.
This may not mean much but Yemen is a rare albeit fractured democracy in the Gulf, most of which is a fiefdom of authoritarian Kings, Emirs and Sheikhs.
All the fiefdoms have many friends in the US, the West and other major countries because of their generally peaceful behavior and dedication to commerce.
But the Saudi intervention in Yemen could change those perceptions if it is long and results in extensive civilian deaths and material destruction.
Saudi failure or outright defeat in Yemen could destabilize the king and the powerful religious establishment in Saudi Arabia, leaving a fractured Yemen wide open for either Iran or al Qaeda and ISIL or all three.
That prospect would surely pull the US, however reluctantly, into another fratricidal war among Arab Muslims.