UN blacklists Yemeni al-Qaeda group

The United Nations security council has added the Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to its list of outlawed organisations.

Two of the group's purported leaders, Nasser al-Wahayshi and Qasim al-Raymi, also face new restrictions after the move by the international body's sanctions committee on Tuesday.

Among the sanctions against the two men, who were among 23 fighters who escaped from a jail in Sanaa in 2006, were worldwide freezes on their assets and travel bans.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claims to have been behind the failed attempt to blow up a Detriot-bound airliner on Christmas Day as well as other attacks inside Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

"Today's actions strengthen international efforts to degrade the capabilities of AQAP," Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said.

The UN committee made its decision the day after the US state department added the al-Qaeda group to it list of proscribed organisations.

"We are determined to eliminate AQAP's ability to execute violent attacks and to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat their networks," Philip Crowley, a state department spokesman, said.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was formed in January 2009 after the merger of groups in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

It has since set up bases inside Yemen and has been blamed for the suicide attack on South Korean tourists in March 2009 and an attempt to assassinate the Saudi deputy interior minister across the border in neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

Yemen has bolsetered its troops in three of the country's provinces in an attempt to tackle al-Qaeda and has carried out a number of air raids, which it claims have left dozens of fighters dead.

Al-Raymi was among a number of senior al-Qaeda figures reported to have been killed in a Yemeni attack on two vehicles on Friday.

The government in Sanaa is also battling so-called Houthi rebels in the north and a secessionist movement in the south.

Al Jazeera

No Joy in Riyadh

According to an article on Debka.com, Saudi King Abdullah has failed to put together a coalition similar to the coalition that allowed the current Lebanese government to be formed.

The articlemakes several points none of which are particularly good for the United States and the Middle East.

1. For the second time in three months, he embarked on an action that required Riyadh to publicly concede that nothing can be achieved in the Middle East these days without Iran’s nod. (Bold mine.)

The Saudi monarch went ahead with his Palestinian maneuver, after listening politely to the visiting US National Security Adviser James Jones expounding on administration policy on Iran in Riyadh Tuesday, Jan. 13.

Then too he was not convinced Washington would pursue any effective policy against Iran and its nuclear program, any more than he had trusted the assurances given him last year by President Barak Obama in person, defense secretary Robert Gates or presidential envoy Dennis Ross.

This mistrust was summed up in Abdullah’s recent remark: “We have heard enough words from you [Washington]. Action we have yet to see.” (Bold Mine.)

Analysis. The Saudis have severe problems on all of their borders as well as internally.

DEBKAfile’s Saudi experts report that the Saudi military has meanwhile returned to the Yemen battlefield against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in the north, less than a month after striking a deal guaranteed by the Syrian president for a Saudi troop pull-out from Yemen to be matched by a Houthi withdrawal from Saudi territory.

Abdullah made the mistake of counting on Assad’s word binding Tehran too as the Yemeni rebels’ sponsor. But the departing Houthis turned round and quickly regained their former positions in the southern Saudi provinces.

The Saudis are doing their best to get the “Palestinians” unified so that they can negotiate with Israel over a Palestinian state. They really want to put an end to that festering sore.

But Iran will not accept any Palestinian coalition that does not put the “rejectionist” faction foremost in the PLO. It is doubtful that the Fatah faction under Abbas would accept this and there is a whole lot of doubt that Israel would negotiate with Khaled Mashaal siting across the table from Benyamin Netanyahu.

What the Saudis want to see is some action from the United States that implies American willingness to take a risk to shut down the Iranian nuclear program. Not from this administration.

This is not an administration that is willing to consider the judicious use of force when it is absolutely required. Nor is this administration willing to challenge the People’s Republic of China where their national interests in the form of energy are at stake.

There are news reports that the PRC is sending a low level diplomat to the advisors level 5+1 talks at the UN this weekend. The PRC has made its position quite clear that it does not support anything that resembles effective sanctions. The PRC will not support any actions that might cause the Iranians to even threaten to close the Straits of Hormuz.

As long as the Saudis see Iran as the eventual winner in the contest between the United States and Israel against Iran, they will defer to the Iranians.

The Saudis realize that this is a dangerous move for them in both secular and religious terms. The Wahabbist Saudis certainly do not want the Shiites to become the ascendant sect of Islam.

Nor do Arabs think highly of Persians. Both sides realize that eventually there must be another religious war on the order of Mutawiya against Ali. That war will not remain within the confines of the Middle East.

World Threats

Saudi and Yemeni forces claim victory in renewed fighting with rebels

Saudi and Yemeni forces announced that they have fought renewed battles with Houthi rebels on the border between the two states.

They claim to have driven the Shia rebels out of the last Saudi frontier area that they had been holding.

Prince Khaled bin Sultan, the Saudi Assistant Defence Minister, said that Houthi forces had been given two days to withdraw from the border post area of al-Jabri but did not comply with the ultimatum.

“All of them have been destroyed,” he said, claiming that hundreds of the rebels — named after their leader, Abdulmalik al-Houthi — had been killed. There was no independent verification of the numbers of casualties in the area, which is closed to the outside world, with only a few aid groups allowed to enter. The Saudi military said that it had lost four soldiers in the clashes, bringing total losses for the kingdom to 82, with 21 missing, since Riyadh launched its offensive against the rebels in November.

“Saudi forces have achieved all their targets,” said the Prince in a visit to the border area yesterday. The rebels had been driven from most of their positions inside Saudi Arabia by an offensive last month but had held on to al-Jabri and even tried to advance from it, the prince said.

“They have to go back to reason and realise that their capabilities” remain modest compared to Saudi Arabia, he said. But senior Yemeni officials, as well as other Arab intelligence agencies, believe that Iran is backing the Houthis, who are fellow Shias but of a different branch of the sect. They are however united with Iran by their visceral hatred of the United States. Yemen has also hinted they may have logistical links with al-Qaeda-related groups operating in the Horn of Africa, across the narrow Gulf of Aden.

In a separate battle, Yemeni troops said that they had killed 19 Houthi fighters in a battleinside the country’s borders. The Houthi insurgency, inspired by a perceived lack of political and economic freedoms by the rebels, is seen by Yemen’s Government as the most pressing threat to national security, although the United States is leaning on it heavily to devote more resources to fighting al-Qaeda militants who are rallying in the southeast of the country.

The Government is also facing growing secessionist calls in the south, which was a separate state until 1990 and whose citizens complain that their natural oil and gas reserves are enriching the regime which has neglected the interests of the south.

Times Online

Battleground Yemen - Ryan Mauro

Click here for my second FrontPage Magazine article this week, this one discussing the dynamics of the war in Yemen.

The Yemeni government (along with the Saudis, Egyptians, Jordanians and Moroccans) are trying to fight back the Iranian-supported Houthi rebels, some of whom are being trained by the Revolutionary Guards in Eritrea.

This is a full-blown proxy war.

Now, at the same time, the already-stretched-thin Yemeni government is expected to fight Al-Qaeda, which it has tried to strike deals and truces with just like Pakistan has tried to do.

The Yemeni security forces has high-level sympathizers of Salafi extremism, and so the comparison is pretty solid.

If the U.S. wants Yemen to stop tolerating Al-Qaeda and other radical Sunni elements as a way of fighting the Shiite Houthis, then the U.S. will need to threaten the Yemenis as well as offer to be a far better partner than those militants ever could be.

World Threats

Iran Plans Another Escalation in Yemen?

As stated in the previous post, Iran just keeps upping the ante. They are extremely dedicated to winning the proxy war in the Gulf.

If you thought the previous report was concerning, this next report says an even greater offensive with more Iranian involvement is on the way:

A senior official from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has recently met with Houthi rebels and Hizbullah activists in Yemen to coordinate joint military operations against Saudi positions along the border.

Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, quoted on Sunday Arab sources as saying the three-way meeting also aimed at developing a plan to escalate the military situation along the Saudi-Yemeni border.

It said the high-level meeting which took place last month was the most prominent evidence of “direct Iranian involvement” in the support of Houthi rebels financially, militarily and logistically.

The report says the meeting took place after the Yemeni authorities have twice refused to accept Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki for talks on the crisis. The report added that in recent weeks, the Yemeni navy foiled several attempts by the Iranian to smuggle arms to the Houthis.

World Threats

Kuwaiti Press: Khamenei Orders Plan to Seize Yemeni, Saudi Embassies

The Iranians just keep escalating the conflict in the Gulf. It is remarkable how far they are willing to go to support their extremist Houthi allies fighting the Yemeni and Saudi government.

First, Iran reacted to the Saudi naval blockade by sending their own warships to the Gulf of Aden. Then, the Iranians tried to instigate riots during the hajj in Saudi Arabia. Now, this:

The Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa reports, citing Iranian sources, that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has submitted to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei a plan to take over the Yemen and Saudi Embassies in Tehran, like the U.S. Embassy takeover in 1979.

The plan, which the report says includes kidnapping Saudi and Yemeni diplomats, was drawn up on Khamenei’s instructions, with the aim of pressuring both countries to stop fighting the Houthi rebels in northern Yemen.

Source: Al-Siyassa, Kuwait, December 11, 2009

World Threats

Saudi builds war refugee homes

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has ordered the construction of 10,000 new housing units for nationals who fled a border conflict in the south-west of the kingdom.

According to the SPA news agency on Thursday, the announcement came as the king visited front-line troops in the southern province of Jizan, where Saudi forces have been battling Yemeni rebels for over four weeks.

Thousands of nationals who live along the mountainous border have been relocated to tent camps inland as the Saudis aim to set up 10 kilometre buffer zones on either side of the border.

The order to build new housing appears to confirm reports that Riyadh intends the buffer to be permanent, at least on the Saudi side.

It is the king's first visit to the area since the army began shelling the rugged border with northwest Yemen in early November.

The Saudi military is undertaking its largest mobilisation since the 1990-91 Gulf War following a minor border incursion by the Huthis, deploying fighter bombers, heavy artillery, special forces and naval vessels against the rebels.

The Saudis say they are acting to prevent the Huthis and other threats from crossing into Saudi territory, after a band killed a Saudi border guard and temporarily occupied two Jizan villages on November 3.

Analysts say the Saudis are also closely assisting Yemen's government in its effort to crush the rebellion.

Saudi-owned regional daily Asharq al-Awsat reported on Wednesday that bombers and artillery continued to hit Huthi positions this week and that ground troops using armoured vehicles were patrolling the region to search for rebels.

Ten Saudi soldiers have died in the conflict, according to an unofficial toll.

Al Jazeera

Yemen Changes Name of Iran Boulevard to Neda Soltan Street

Yemen has renamed Iran Boulevard, a street in its country, to Neda Soltan Street, named after the young female protestor who was shot and killed in June on videotape that quickly spread around the world.

Her name has since become a rallying cry for Iranian opposition activists of all kinds and human rights advocates around the world.

Yemen isn’t exactly a model for human rights, but they deserve applause for giving recognition to Neda and in so doing, giving the Iranian regime a much-needed slap.

This move by Yemen came after Iran named a street in Tehran after the founder of the extremist Houthi rebels currently fighting the Yemeni and Saudi governments.

World Threats

Update on Proxy War Between Arabs and Iran in Yemen

Richard already touched on this, but this article’s importance needs to be reemphasized: Iran is actively trying to stir up internal discontent in Saudi Arabia.

This follows the dispatching of naval forces including mini-submarines in the Gulf of Aden ostensibly to fight Somali piracy.

This is a MAJOR escalation and as Rich said, indicates this war is Iran’s main concern right now.

• A street in Tehran has been named after Hussein Badr Al-Din Al-Houthi, the former leader of the radical Shiites currently fighting the Yemeni government with Iranian backing.
• Yemen has shut down a hospital and clinic in Sadaa run by the Iranian Red Crescent, saying the facilities were receiving funding from the Iranian government.

World Threats

Yemen Update

Debka is reporting on its headline crawl that the Saudis have sent out an emergency request to the Gulf States for their Special Forces to assist in the fight against the Houthi rebels in northern Yemen.

Analysis. The previous post based upon a story in Alsharq Alaswat may not be the whole story.

The Saudis, with the assistance of the Jordanian Special Forces, may well have controlled the border.

The request for additional special forces probably means that the Saudis are attempting to destroy the Houthis as a threat both military and religious.

As long as the Houthis exist in some number, the Saudis are subject to Iranian meddling on their southern border and the World is subject to the possibility of Iranian control of the southern entrance to the Red Sea by proxy.

Should this conflict be the one that breaks the camel’s back, removing the Houthi threat eliminates one battle front that the Saudis and their allies must contend with.

That ally would most likely be the Egyptians at this point whose forces would be better used deployed in Jordan to take on the Syrians and Hezbollah.

World Threats

Saudi Southern Border Controlled

The Arab newspaper Alsharq Alaswat is reporting

that their border with Yemen is now under their control.

Jizan, Asharq Al-Awsat-Saudi military sources confirmed yesterday that many of the commanders of the Huthi infiltrators have been killed, while a number of others have been captured attempting to flee the conflict in disguise.

This comes at the same time that the Royal Saudi Air Force is launching constant attacks against the Huthi insurgent’s strategic camps and fortifications, which sources confirmed were completely destroyed.

Analysis. I don’t know if this is a win for the “good guys” or not. It is a win for the better guys at least in this conflict pairing. Whether or not this will be considered a serious set back by the Iranians is open for debate. I don’t doubt that it will deter Iranian mischief without something else to distract them.

The internal dissent that world Threats documents here almost daily may be that distraction. I do believe that the internal dissent must grow to more of a threat to the Supreme Leader than it appears now.

December 7 may tell us a lot about the strength of the anti Khamenei movement. To distract the regime from foreign adventures, it must feel sufficiently threatened to recall the greater part of the Qods Force to suppress the people.

The other outcome of a messy December Seventh may be an increase in foreign adventures in an attempt to generate unity through war. This Yemen adventure may be a symptom of this attempt to create unity.

World Threats

Yemeni Situation Update and the Hajj

Debka has two updates on the situation in Yemen and the Houthi Rebellion. First, Debka is reporting here that the Iranians are planning to deploy midget submarines to the area. This is apparently in response to the assignment of the USS Chosin to lead Task Force 151 patrolling the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

The Yemeni conflict is fast evolving from a Houthi insurgency against the Abdullah Salah regime in Sanaa to a broad regional conflagration drawing in Saudi Arabia and Egypt as major players and increasingly the United States, whose involvement is building up into a direct confrontation with the rebels’ sponsor, Iran.

The belief is that the Iranians are bringing the midget submarines to assist in the supplying of arms and equipment ot the Houthi rebels.

On the same note, Debka is also reporting here that Jordan has sent its 2000 strong Special Forces to assist the Saudis in dealing with the Houthi Rebellion. This dispatch was at the request of the Saudis.

At the same time the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is reporting in translation here that Iran is attempting to create chaos during the Hajj.

A few days before the Hajj (November 25-30, 2009), Iranian officials deliberately intensified statements calling on Shi’ites, and all Hajj pilgrims to Mecca, to conduct baraa - a kind of political protest against the infidels and apostates instituted by the founder of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini - against the U.S. and the Saudi Wahhabis, whom Iran currently claims are slaughtering Shi’ites in Yemen. [1] During the baraa ceremony, pilgrims demonstrate in denunciation of apostates and the enemies of Islam, chanting political slogans such as “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”

In addition, Iranian senior officials, as well as the country’s leading newspapers, hinted and warned that the unrest in Yemen would not be bound by that country’s borders, and could spill over into Saudi Arabia, threatening the stability of the regime there.

It would appear that Iran is attempting to arouse unrest in Saudi Arabia, against the backdrop of increased demands in recent days by the U.S. and Russia that Iran accept the conditions for its nuclear program proposed by the 5+1 in Vienna, and also against the backdrop of the ongoing fighting in Yemen between the Shi’ite Houthis, who are aided by Iran, and the Yemen government troops, aided by Saudi Arabia, in which the latter side is prevailing.

Please read the entire article which is too long to print here.

Analysis.I believe that there can be little doubt that the theocracy of Iran is attempting to destabilize the region. Unlike the MEMRI analysis in the third paragraph above, I believe that the pressure on Iran to stop enriching uranium is only part of the impetus behind the Iranian efforts.

The major goal of the Iranians is to make Shia Islam the primary sect of Islam.

Shiites believe that the leadership of Islam should follow the lineage of the family of Mohammad. The Sunni believe that there is no supreme leader but that leadership in Islam is by a caliph selected as the most pious among them. Secondarily I believe that the theocracy is attempting to create the chaos necessary to cause the Hidden Imam to return.

This particular confluence of events is most demonstrative of the goals. The Iranians have already established their Northwestern Front with Syria and Lebanon. Yemen is the Southwestern Front. Mecca is only about 350 miles from the Saudi/Yemeni border.

While I doubt that the Houthi could reach Mecca en masse, it is quite possible that small groups of saboteurs could reach Mecca and possibly cause a mess as happened in 1987. This would be another embarrassment to the Saudis.

The question right now is how far the Iranians will go. Will they use their midget submarines to try and break the blockade of the Yemeni ports to get arms and supplies to the Houthis and take the chance of engaging American warships?

Will they cause the Syrians or Hezbollah to threaten Jordan to force the recall of the Jordanian Special Forces? Will they try to disrupt the Hajj? All the above? None of the above? Something in the Persian Gulf?

At this point all we can do is react. That is not a good mode to be in but short of direct military action against Iran there is little that can be done at the moment. It is clear that diplomatic efforts are having no effect on Iran’s goals or actions.

I would expect that Debka will reveal additional meetings between the Intelligence chiefs of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel. Nor would I be surprised that the Iraqi Intelligence Chief had joined the group since the shrine that is built over the well that the Hidden Imam will use to return is in Iraq.

World Threats

It Doesn't Matter If They Are Salafis or Shiites

By Dr. Hamad Al-Majid

The Iranian media chorus wishes to mislead the Arab and Islamic world into believing that the Saudi Arabian military conflict in its southern border region with the Huthi insurgents is nothing more than a sectarian conflict against the Zaidi Shiites.

According to Iranian publications and "Iranized" media, such as newspapers and Arab satellite channels, Saudi Arabia's defense of its national borders is being portrayed as a Salafi or Wahabi conflict against the oppressed Huthi Shiites.

It does not require a lot of effort to disprove this and expose those who are promoting such false information as Saudi Arabia has been fighting a fierce war against extremists, takfiris, and terrorists, all of whom are either followers or ideological supporters of the Al Qaeda organization.

These groups are undoubtedly cloaked in the Salafi ideology, however despite this the "Salafi" Saudi Arabia has not shown them any mercy, and has not hesitated to pursue and destroy them, both physically and ideologically.

This is because these groups have stepped over the line and threatened the country from within by targeting Saudi Arabia's security headquarters, economic infrastructure, and also its political figures.

Only a tiny minority of those with low self esteem in the Sunni Salafi Saudi Arabia sympathies with those who raise these Salafi slogans. Those who follow this ideology are psychologically troubled, and if they were free to do as they pleased, they would ultimately end up attacking one another, in the same way that fire consumes itself when it runs out of fuel.

The Huthi insurgents and the Salafi takfirist terrorists are equally threatening. The former picked a quarrel in Saudi Arabia's border region and sent in armed fighters to infiltrate the Saudi interior, while the takfirists are comprised of psychologically disturbed [Saudi] citizens who want to destabilize the country from within.

More at Asharq Alawsat

Huthi Rebels Using New Tactics on the Battlefield

As confrontations between Saudi forces and infiltrators enter its fourth week, information received from the battlefront indicates that the infiltrators have resorted to new combat tactics, including disguising themselves as animals after their previous ploy of using women's clothes had failed, as they try to penetrate the fortified southern Saudi borders.

According to the reports of Saudi soldiers from the battlefront, the small groups of infiltrators which are usually made up of 10 to 20 fighters tried deceiving the Saudi army by using animals, placing searchlights on them, and releasing them in various parts of the border strip so as to give the impression that these were moves by the infiltrators intending to attack Saudi military positions.

They stressed that the infiltrators also resorted to setting up ambushes, deceptions, and using animals' hides as disguise after they failed to disguise themselves in women's clothes for penetrating, outflanking the Saudi forces, and attacking them from behind.

These ploys succeeded at first, especially as the infiltrators were well acquainted with the area's topography and relied on the hills to discover the Saudi army's moves inside its territories which are relatively lower than the areas on the other side of the borders with Yemen.

It became evident that the military reinforcements sent recently to the battlefield and the intensive deployment of Saudi land forces, marines, and paratrooper brigades supported by "F15" and Tornado aircrafts and reconnaissance and Apache helicopters reduced the infiltration attempts during the past days.

Saudi military sources inside the battle described the infiltrators' direct assaults as "suicide operations that are impossible to result in any military victory for lightly-armed groups."

They stressed that the lines of retreat for them are totally blocked and anyone who tries to penetrate the borders and come inside the restricted military sector "will face either death or decide to surrender" and added that the most the infiltrators are seeking is to score human losses in the Saudi forces ranks.

Meanwhile, a high-level military official in the Saudi armed forces told Asharq Al-Awsat that the infiltrators' plans are not static but change continuously between hiding among the displaced, shooting from the back, or hiding inside the border villages' houses and attacking at night and stressed that the Saudi forces are confronting and foiling all these attempts.

During the first two weeks following the purge of Jabal Dokhan where the clashes first broke out, the Huthis relied on infiltrating in small numbers and groups of few dozens into the areas of the Saudi forces' deployment and therefore escape the air and artillery bombardment and then exchange fire. This was done on several fronts in Jabal Dokhan, Al-Rumayh, and the border Jallah village.

More at asharq Alawsat

Yemen On The Brink

by Stephen Brown

While the fighting in Afghanistan continues to dominate news coverage, one Middle Eastern country has emerged as a leading flashpoint of Islamic terrorism.

Yemen, most recently in the headlines as the home of Anwar al Awlaki, the exiled imam who fled to the country after inspiring Fort Hood murderer Nidal Malik Hasan, has become a haven for al-Qaeda even as its internal turmoil has drawn in regional rivals like Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Yemen is the poorest and most unstable of all Middle Eastern countries. Located in the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula, it occupies a strategic position that makes the country difficult to ignore.

At its south-western tip, Yemen straddles one side of the strategic, 20-mile wide Mandab Strait that connects the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea, a vital international shipping lane leading to the Suez Canal. Equally important for world commerce, Saudi Arabia’s oil fields lie just across Yemen’s northern border.

It is Yemen’s northern area, particularly the Saada region, which is beginning to attract international attention. A bitter civil war there is threatening to turn into a regional conflict pitting Iran against Saudi Arabia. A rebellion among Saada’s Shiite tribes, called the Houthis (the name of the clan leading the revolt), against Yemen’s central government has seen the two rival Muslim states stake out sides in the conflict.

Iran, which champions the Shiite cause throughout the Islamic world, has reportedly sent combatants from its own Revolutionary Guards as well as from Hezbollah, its proxy Shiite fighting force in Lebanon, to help the Houthis. Last month, Yemen’s navy exposed the extent of Iran’s involvement in the conflict when it seized a ship off its coast carrying Iranian arms for the Shiite rebels.

Saudi Arabia, the leader of Islam’s majority Sunni branch and home of the intolerant and anti-Shiite Wahhabi doctrine, has been backing Yemen’s government with money and weapons of its own.

But a Houthi incursion across the porous and mountainous Saudi-Yemeni border earlier this month, in which three Saudi villages were seized and a border guard killed changed that.

The Saudi government reacted immediately to this escalation, sending warplanes to bomb Houthi positions in Yemen’s mountainous northern region and an army column across the border to confront the rebels directly.

More at FrontPage Magazine

Saudi flexes its muscles ahead of Hajj

Days before the start of the Islamic pilgrimage, Saudi Arabia holds a massive display of its armed forces. An annual event, the parade is meant to deter any who might seek to disrupt the event.

On top of fears of an outbreak of H1N1 flu during Hajj, Saudi Arabia has found it also has a number of security issues to be concerned about this year. One of those issues has been rising tensions between Saudi and nearby Iran.

In the past, Iranian pilgrims have complained, held protests and even clashed with police over being mistreated during Hajj. This time, though, the complaints have been over Saudi's part in operations against Houthi fighters in northern Yemen.

An annual pre-Hajj event, Saudi authorities held a massive security forces demonstration at Arafat on Sunday evening, showing off the various battalions and personnel that are currently being deployed for the "protection of the pilgrims".

The military parade is largely seen as a show of force by the government, meant to deter any and all who might seek to disrupt the holy pilgrimage.

Speaking at the parade, Muhammad bin Abdullah al-Shahrani, head of emergency special forces that oversees Hajj security, said more than 100,000 personnel were being deployed this year. That number includes soldiers and security forces, police and emergency response teams.

It would seem the entirety of that force - from bomb squads to K9 units, and including ambulances, helicopters and armoured personnel carriers - were on display on Sunday.

After the sun set, the closely-controlled crowd of cameramen and journalists were corralled into a news conference with Prince Naif bin Abdul Aziz, Saudi's interior minister.

When asked about tensions with Iran and the possibility of a protest, Naif responded saying that if anyone were to threaten the sanctity of Hajj, they would be dealt with by force.

However, in response to follow-up questions, Naif clarified that he does not expect any disruptions of Hajj by Iranian pilgrims this year, as officials from Tehran had recently arrived in the kingdom, offering their reassurances and guarantees that no protests would be held.

On the subject of Yemen, Naif felt the need to reiterate that the Saudi and Yemeni governments were united against the "bad people", adding that fighting with the Houthis had nothing to do with Hajj.

With a word of praise for his men, Naif said he was completely satisfied with the security preparations being taken this year.

Al Jazeera

Iranians and Saudis Fight a Proxy War in Yemen

by Ryan Mauro

Iran is now waging a proxy war against Saudi Arabia and Yemen by supporting a radical sect of Zaydi Shiites described as the Houthis, after the founder of their movement.

The Iranians aren’t merely trying to destabilize Arab countries that are aligned too closely to the U.S.; they are trying to create a Shiite empire extending from Iran through southern Iraq to Syria — where the Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Muslims, are in power — to Lebanon.

Now Iran is trying to create a Shiite enclave in northern Yemen. If Iran gets nuclear weapons, it is easy to predict where they will go next: Bahrain, whose population is majority Shiite, and Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, which conveniently for Iran is 75% Shiite and is the location of 90% of the country’s oil.

The fighting in northern Yemen between the rebels and the Yemeni government has sharply escalated in recent weeks, with violence spilling over the Saudi border.

The Saudis have responded by reclaiming their territory, bombing the rebels within a buffer zone six miles south of the border, and beginning a naval blockade in the area to prevent arms from flowing in from outside the peninsula.

There is also a report that the Saudis are sending thousands of troops to provide logistical support for the Yemeni military and are financing them with $5 million per day.

Iran has reacted to the Saudi intervention by calling for a “collective approach” (read: negotiate with Iran for a settlement in their favor) in solving the crisis and offering its help in restoring stability, a not-so-subtle way of hinting that they hold the keys for a solution.

The unfortunate truth is that the Iranians aren’t bluffing. The Yemenis have captured an Iranian ship delivering weapons to the Houthi rebels and arrested the crewmen: four Iranians and one Indian. The Revolutionary Guards are reportedly training some of the rebels at camps in Eritrea and shipping arms to them via the port of Asab.

A former Houthi official has confirmed that the rebels are receiving Iranian funding and training from the Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds Force and Hezbollah. He said that members of Hezbollah may have been killed in Yemen.

The rebels have fired Katyusha rockets, the same kind of weapon often used by Hezbollah, and even flew the terrorist group’s flag in 2004. The authorities have also closed a hospital in Sana after it was found to be used by the Iranians to fundraise for the rebels and to gather intelligence, and at least six arms depots containing Iranian-manufactured machine guns, rockets, and other weapons have been found.

More at Pajamas Media

Yemen Hosting Al-Qaeda Training Camps

The Long War Journal reports that the Arab press has a story about an Al-Qaeda camp that just opened in Al-Jaza in the district of Mudiyah in the province of Abyan, containing 400 militants.

They report that a second camp opened in Abyan Province in the spring.

Iran is supporting Al-Qaeda elements involved in fighting the Yemeni government as well as the Shiite Houthi rebels.

Yemen apparently is supporting these same Al-Qaeda elements in order to use them to fight the Houthi rebels.

No one ever said Middle Eastern geopolitics wasn’t complicated.

World Threats

Yemen says Iran funding rebels

Yemen has repeated its accusation that Iran is funding Houthi rebel fighters in their war against government forces in the north of the country.

General Yahya Salih, Yemen's counter-terrorism chief, told Al Jazeera on Sunday that it would be impossible for the group to be able to wage its campaign without foreign support.

"The Houthis cannot fund and fight this war with pomegranates and grapes or drugs," he said.

"No doubt there is Iranian support, especially when you consider that the Yemeni state is spending billions of riyals."

Yemen launched a military offensive against the Houthis in the northern Saada region in August after the group's fighters stepped up its campaign against the government.

Neighbouring Saudi Arabia has become embroiled in the conflict in recent weeks, launching air raids and artillery strikes on suspected Houthi targets after the group crossed the border and reportedly seized a small area of Saudi territory.

Manouchehr Mottaki, the Iranian foreign minister, last week warned against perceived foreign intervention in the conflict.

"Countries of the region must seriously hold back from intervening in Yemen's internal affairs," he told a news conference in Tehran.

Mottaki also said that Yemen needed to "rehabilitate relations" with its public, including the Shia minority from which the Houthi fightyers come, adding that Iran had already announced its willingness to mediate between them.

But Salih told Al Jazeera that Tehran had no right to question Yemen's treatment of ethnic or religious minorities.

"Who has given Mr Mottaki the right to talk about minorities?

"Minorities are persecuted in Iran, just recently they executed Kurd activists. He who lives in a glass house shouldn't throw stones."

The Houthis, who are from the Shia Muslim Zaidi sect, first took up arms against the government of Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president, in 2004, citing political, economic and religious marginalisation by the Saudi and Western-backed administration.

Read more at Al Jazeera (English)

Iran Goes Gopher

Debka is reporting that Iran is digging a whole bunch of holes in the ground for real and fake missile silos.

The Iranians are frenziedly digging hundreds of new missile launch silos in central and Western Iran in readiness for a US or Israeli attack on their nuclear installations, DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report.

Some Western sources have noticed that they are creating more silo bases than they have operational missile batteries in order to mislead their enemies about the locations of the genuine launch pads.

The dummy silos are fully equipped with air defenses including anti-air missiles which too are fake.

Iran is also building a whole bunch of missiles of the Shahab-2, Shahab-3 liquid fuel types and a lot of the new Sajil-2 solid fuel type. There are also indications that the Iranians may be working on a three stage missile patterned after the Pakistani Ghauri-3 series.

Analysis. There is a line spoken by Jim Hutton in The Green Berets where he talks about what he has learned on a reconnaissance of the local Viet Cong forces. The line goes something like this. “Charlie is building a lot of ladders and caskets. Ladders to get at us and caskets to be buried in.” Basically this was an attack warning.

It is difficult to tell if this is an attack warning or a defensive measure, or both. So far the Iranian government has chosen to work through proxies, Hezbollah and the Houthi, to advance its political and religious aims while preserving plausible deniability. I see no immediate reason for them to change tactics.

But they are pushing another button in Riyadh and Jerusalem. An array of missile silos would present a targeting nightmare to the Israelis and the Saudis.

If nothing, it would probably force them to use their supply of “bunker busters” on the missile silos and not on the nuclear facilities.

It is the Israeli F-15Is that are the only jets capable of delivering the bunker busters. They are not certified for the Tornado that I know of. I doubt that a Durandel would penetrate the top of a missile silo even if it was a direct hit.

Or, the Israelis will be forced to fly multiple attack waves and thereby deplete their Air Force. The other possibility is a nuclear strike against some of the targets by Jericho missiles and cruise missiles.

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