By Richard Fernandez in PJ Media and
The Belmont Club blog
Is there a blockade around Yemen?
Who is blockading whom? Where will it lead?
Helene Cooper of the New
York Times says the administration is claiming
credit for turning back a flotilla of Iranian ships which may have been
carrying arms for Tehran-backed rebels. “Pentagon officials on Friday credited
the deployment of an American aircraft carrier group in waters off the coast of
Yemen for a decision by Iran to turn back a naval convoy suspected of carrying
weapons bound for Shiite rebels.” From this one might get the impression
it is the Obama administration that is preventing the Iranians from using the
sea to resupply its allies.
But a closer reading of the story
suggests that USN’s true purpose was to keep the Iranians from challenging the
Saudi blockade, which was already in place. ”Although it was unusual to
dispatch such a large American naval force to the Arabian Sea on an
interdiction and deterrence mission, Pentagon officials said the deployment —
and Iran’s apparent response — had lowered tensions in the continuing regional
proxy war between Tehran and Saudi Arabia.”
Far from delivering an ultimatum to
the Iranians, the administration claims it never even tried to communicate
with the Iranian flotilla.
Defense Department officials said
there were no communications between the American and Iranian ships, and they
could not say what type of cargo was being transported, although an arms
shipment was suspected.
It was unclear whether the United
States would have tried to board or stop the Iranian convoy if it had continued
toward Yemen; such a move would have risked escalating the conflict in Yemen,
and could have stymied fragile negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear program.
The Saudis themselves have claimed responsibility for blockading Yemen’s
ports. But perhaps “blockade” is not entirely the right word for the situation.
The Saudis are hanging onto the ports, defending against a Houthi advance
from the interior.
The Saudi-led coalition that’s
fighting against Shiite rebels in Yemen said it completed a blockade of the
country’s ports and is ready to step up airstrikes. Bombing missions are
seeking to stop the Shiite Houthis from moving forces between Yemen’s cities,
Ahmed Asseri, a Saudi military officer, told reporters in Riyadh on Monday.
Coalition aircraft and warships targeted the rebels as they advanced toward
Aden, the southern port that’s the last stronghold of Saudi Arabia’s ally in
Yemen, President Abdurabuh Mansur Hadi. Shipping routes to and from the ports
are under the coalition’s control, Asseri said.
The Wall Street Journal emphasized this, saying “Saudi officials warned Iran that
its sailors would try to search any ship that tried to dock in Yemen.” The
American concerns were not quite coincident with the Saudis. While the Saudis
were probably trying to prevent the Houthis from being resupplied, the
principal American concern was that the Iranian ships were loaded with threats
to ‘navigation’, that is to say, anti-ship weapons.
“What we’ve said to them is that if
there are weapons delivered to factions within Yemen that could threaten
navigation, that’s a problem,” Mr. Obama said on MSNBC this week. “And we’re
not sending them obscure messages. We send them very direct messages about it.”
‘Threats to navigation’ is probably
a code word for anti-ship missiles and mines that could be deployed in
the Bab-el-Mandeb, “a strait located between Yemen on
the Arabian Peninsula, and Djibouti and Eritrea in the Horn of Africa. It
connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.” The strait is exceedingly narrow and
vulnerable to interdiction.
The Bab-el-Mandeb acts as a
strategic link between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, via the Red
Sea and the Suez Canal. In 2006, an estimated 3.3 million barrels (520,000 m3)
of oil passed through the strait per day, out of a world total of about 43
million barrels per day (6,800,000 m3/d) moved by tankers.
The distance across is about 20
miles (30 km) from Ras Menheli in Yemen to Ras Siyyan in Djibouti. The island
of Perim divides the strait into two channels, of which the eastern, known as
the Bab Iskender (Alexander’s Strait), is 2 miles (3 km) wide and 16 fathoms
(30 m) deep, while the western, or Dact-el-Mayun, has a width of about 16 miles
(25 km) and a depth of 170 fathoms (310 m). Near the coast of Djibouti lies a
group of smaller islands known as the “Seven Brothers”.
While Washington wants credit for
turning back the Iranians, one of the things the administration does not want
to take responsibility for is starving Yemen. Yet that is also an outcome of
the Saudi control of the ports. An editorial from the same New York Times, places the blame for a blockade squarely on Saudi Arabia.
“Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in Yemen’s civil war was always a risky
gamble. Now there’s evidence showing just how damaging four weeks of airstrikes
have been: more than 1,000 civilians killed, more than 4,000 wounded, and
150,000 displaced. Meanwhile, the fighting and a Saudi-led blockade have
deprived Yemenis of food, fuel, water and medicines, causing what a Red Cross
official called a humanitarian catastrophe. Yemen has long been a weak state,
and with each day it draws closer to collapse.”
The editorial carefully tries to
credit the administration with the good part while exculpating them from the
bad part of the blockade. “The Obama administration has helped the Saudis with
intelligence and tactical advice and by deploying warships off the Yemeni
coast. Now it is wisely urging them to end the bombing. The White House seems
to have realized that the Saudis appear to have no credible strategy for
achieving their political goals, or even managing their intervention.”
The fundamental bluntness of Saudi
military tools raise doubts over whether it can implement a selective blockade,
similar to the complex regime of sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council
on Saddam Hussein, which would call for an expensive and intelligent regime
of inspections which would let pure “humanitarian” aid through while blocking
supplies of military use. But in Yemen, food itself will ultimately be a
military commodity. An intelligent blockade of Yemen would resemble a
giant Blockade of the Gaza
Strip. It is doubtful the Saudis
could ever manage this. They cannot even find a way to selectively
evacuate American citizens in Yemen.
The problem now facing the
administration is two-fold. The first is how to keep the Saudis from starving
their enemies. The second is how to keep the Saudis from losing the war from
incompetence, which would lead to instability in Bab-el-Mandeb. It appears to
be trying to square the circle by attempting to de-escalate the conflict
between the two Islamic powers. Eric Schmitt and Michael
Gordon of the NY Times describe
the horns of the dilemma on which Obama is impaled.
WASHINGTON — Saudi Arabia’s
resumption of airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen on Wednesday, only
hours after it abruptly declared a halt to most military operations, reflected
the difficulty of finding a political solution to the crisis. It also showed
the challenges facing the Obama administration as it increasingly relies on
allies in the Middle East.
Senior Saudi officials made clear on
Wednesday that they had not formally declared an end to bombing. Rather, the
Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, said the campaign was
shifting to a new phase — one in which Saudi airstrikes would be more limited
and come only in response to Houthi attacks, such as the assault against Yemeni
troops in Taiz….
The ambassador did not mention the
intensifying international pressure, including from the Obama administration,
to stop airstrikes that medical and relief organizations said were killing
hundreds of civilians, and to lift an embargo on food, fuel, water and
medicines that was contributing to a growing humanitarian catastrophe. …
For an array of senior American
officials engaged with senior Saudi officials in recent days — including
Secretary of State John Kerry and John O. Brennan, the director of the Central
Intelligence Agency — the challenge has been advising a crucial Middle East
ally on how to carry out a complex military campaign whose results were
starting to undercut larger political goals.
For now, the answer the Saudis have
come up with is to recast the air campaign by putting the blame on the Houthis
for provoking any further airstrikes and delaying a deal to end the fighting.
To ease the humanitarian crisis, the
administration is trying to persuade the Kingdom to adopt the American
stop-and-go way of war, to adopt a course which leads to that most desirable of
diplomatic outcomes, a perpetual stalemate. Unless the Saudis adopt at least
the trappings of politically correctness, the administration will come under
pressure to abandon it. Yet without the backing of the administration, the
Saudis may not survive. Under these circumstances, the “blockade” will become a
two edged sword; what cuts at the Houthi supply line also strikes at the
Kingdom’s political jugular.
Iran’s failed convoy may have won an
indirect victory by allowing Tehran to portray Washington as complicit in the
Saudi strangulation of supplies. That is ironic, since many Sunnis have long
believed the administration was in the Shi’ite camp. By being on everyone’s
side the adminisration may succeed in being hated by everyone in the end. The
problem with leading from behind is that everybody gets to f**t in your face.
The Western goal in both Yemen and
Syria is to avoid a battlefield decision in favor of a negotiated settlement.
The administration’s goal is therefore to prevent any side from winning. The
Saudi blockade is testing the limits of that concept by making Washington
choose between precipitating a humanitarian crisis or allowing the Kingdom’s
enemies to resupply. Having closed the port of victory to itself the Obama
administration has condemned its policy to the fate of the Flying Dutchman,
doomed to wander the seas of foreign policy forever without ever finding
harbor.
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