I get that war is hell. No one has to convince us of that.
The war has been presented as a contest between the “moderate” Saudis and Iran, with the Houthis as supposedly Iran’s proxies. To make a fair judgement of the rightness or wrongness of the war, we need to know how fair that of an analysis that is, and what are the likely results of Houthi rule in Yemen. Versus, of course, the likely rule of the Saudis’ proxies in Yemen.
The likely result of Houthi rule in Yemen is 1)continued and protracted civil war in Yemen, 2)continued efforts by KSA to eradicate their archenemy Iran’s Houthi proxies and too bad about the collateral damage, and 3)choking off oil supplies from the Arabian peninsula at the Arabian Gulf/Straits of Hormuz (Iran) and at the Red Sea at Hudaida (Yemen).
This is not about moderate political views. It is about KSA being able to deliver oil on the world market and KSA’s oil is Iran’s immediate target. Once Iran controls the oil they can overthrow the government of KSA. Once they do that, they can control Mecca and once they control Mecca they control the world’s Muslims. Israel and Europe are secondary targets after the oil.
The Houthis are a tiny, Shiite minority(~2%), in a majority Sunni population. They were easily co-opted by Iran, first with persecuted minority status, then with funding, food, supplies and weapons. Yemen is an astonishingly poor country whose resources are not enough to support its own people. Outside funding can sway a lot of minds and influence behavior. Yemen is also a country where allegiance to the tribe is more immediately important to the average Yemeni than whatever the government in Sana’a is doing. The Yemenis blame Iran for this mess, and rightly so, but even before the bombing started, there was no love lost between Yemen and KSA either.
I was in Yemen in 2009 and the Yemenis were complaining then about Iran funding the Houthis and how it was going to cause trouble. How right they were.
