 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.
 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 Arabia has imposed a naval blockade along the Red Sea coast of northern Yemen in an attempt to cut off supplies to Houthi rebels along its border with Yemen. The kingdom's warships were ordered on Tuesday to search any ship suspected of carrying weapons or fighters near the Yemeni coast, a government adviser said, as Riyadh vowed to continue its offensive against the rebels until they pull back from the border area. Despite a warning by Iran to keep out of Yemen's affairs, Prince Khaled bin Sultan, the Saudi deputy defence minister, pledged to keep up the military offensive against the Houthi rebels on Tuesday, as he visited Saudi troops in the kingdom's southwest Jizan province. "We are not going to stop the bombing until the Houthis retreat tens of kilometres inside their border," he said. His comments came as the rebels announced they had taken control of more territory on the border with Saudi Arabia, heightening concerns about growing instability in the region. The fighters released a statement on Tuesday, saying: "Full control was taken last night over Qatabar directorate and control of all supplies and ammunition as well as buildings and other military sites." Yemeni officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Qatabar lies in the mountainous northern province of Saada, which borders Saudi Arabia, the world's leading oil exporter. The northern province has also been the scene of most of the fighting that has taken place in recent months between Yemeni government forces and the rebels. Saudi forces have launched a series of military strikes in recent days against the Houthis after the fighters killed a Saudi soldier in a cross-border raid last week. Riyadh has become increasingly anxious about instability in Yemen, which is facing opposition from the Shia population in the north, separatist sentiment in the south and a growing threat from resurgent al-Qaeda fighters. The 1,500km border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia is a security worry for the kingdom, which is building a high-tech border fence to prevent infiltration. Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from the Yemeni capital, Sana'a, said: "We are amid a campaign and a propaganda war with both sides saying they have made huge advances. "Saudi Arabia is a key player in Yemen, it has loyalty of tribal leaders, politicians and religious leaders here. "Saudi Arabia prides itself by saying they are the protectors of Sunni Islam and while 80 per cent of Yemen's population is Sunni, they say it is their moral obligation to protect Sunnis everywhere in the world." Saudi Arabia also has concerns that the Houthis are being used by Iran to fight a proxy war against it. Read more here,,,, Source: Al Jazeera (English)
 A leading Yemeni religious leader has accused Iran of inciting violence in the north of the country, where a predominantly Shia Muslim group is waging a war against the government.
Sheikh Abdul Majid al-Zandani, the head of Yemen's Imam University, told supporters that Tehran was trying to promote the Shia ideology in the country by backing the Houthi fighters.
"The way events are moving in this country latest indicates to us that Iran wants to export the Shia ideology by force, which we utterly reject," al-Zandani said.
Fighters from the Houthi group, named after its leader, have been battling the predominantly government forces in Saada province since 2004. The military launched a major offensive - dubbed Operation Scorched Earth - in the north on August 11 in an attempt to crush the group.
The conflict has divided the predominantly Sunni nation, with many demanding that it be resolved quickly as it has claims an increasing number of lives and drains the country's resources.
"I hope wise Sunnis and Shias will hold dialogue, determine what they have agreed on and work according to it, and determine what they have disagreed on and refer these disputes to their prominent scholars to give a final decision on them," al-Zandani said.
"Let them work according to what they have agreed on, and set policies for whatever they disagree on. But to doubt our religion, doubt our beliefs, pull our students, sons and people to their side and turn them against us, encourage them to carry weapons to kill us! This is rejected."
Dr Mahjoob Zweiri, the head of the Iran studies unit at the university of Jordan, said that claims of Iranian involvement in the conflict were being exaggerated."Since about 2003 there has been a trend in Middle East politics that any civil conflict in the region which has relation with Shia or Islamists is being related to Iran," he told Al Jazeera from Amman.
"Iran has a shortage of tools to control such a situation, but there is, however, support in terms of sympathy. "The issue of Saada needs to be looked at in a Yemeni context, in a tribal context. I think that bringing the issue of Wahabbis [a Sunni sect dominant in Saudi Arabia] and Shia to the matter is complicating the matter, not solving it."
Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president and a member of the Zaidi sect who make up the Houthis, has repeatedly vowed to defeat the fighters. "The government is resolved to end the unrest and reinforce security and stability in Saada province in order to focus on development and reconstruction," the Saba state news agency quoted him as telling troops heading north. "The war was imposed on the government by those renegades."
Arab governments have offered their support Sanaa's effort to crush the Houthis.
"We reject... any kind of rebellion and we reject any foreign interference [in Yemen]. Egypt is wholly supporting - with all its power and capabilities - its sister Yemen," Ahmed Abul Gheit, Egypt's foreign minister, said on Sunday. Prince Ahmad bin Abdul Aziz, the Saudi deputy interior minister, said that Riyadh was co-operating with Sanaa in its battle against the Houthis, but dismissed allegations that the Saudi air force was involved in air raids as "absolutely not true".
The fighting in the rugged mountainous north has sent thousands of people fleeing from their homes, with the United Nations putting the total at around 55,000 displaced because of the conflict. On Sunday, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said that it expects to send a convoy of relief goods within days to the displaced. Source: Al Jazeera (English)
 Twenty-eight Houthi fighters have been killed in clashes with the Yemeni army in the country's mountainous north, the defence ministry says. The fighters were killed in the town of Uqab, in Saada province, on Wednesday, In the neighbouring province of Omran, four soldiers and five Houthis were killed as the army continued its Scorched Earth operation against the group. Abdul-Malek al-Houthi, the leader of the Houthi fighters, has threatened to expand attacks against the government across the country. Hundreds of people have died in northern Yemen, with the UN estimating that 55,000 people, mostly women and children, have fled their homes since the army began its offensive on August 11. The Houthi fighters are concentrated mainly in the Saada and Amran provinces. They are known as Houthis after their late leader, Abdul-Malek's brother Hussein Badr Eddin al-Houthi, a Zaidi leader who was killed by the Yemeni army in September 2004. An offshoot of Shia Islam, the Zaidis are a minority in mainly Sunni Yemen but form the majority in the north. Only a small minority of Zaidis are in involved in the Houthi uprising. The government accuses the Houthi fighters of seeking to restore the Zaidi Shia imamate which was overthrown in a 1962 coup that sparked eight years of civil war. The Houthis say they are fighting to defend their community against government aggression and marginalisation. Ali Abdullah Saleh, the Yemeni president, has brushed aside calls for dialogue. Read more here,,,, Source: Al Jazeera (English)
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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.
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