With Yemen’s success in expelling American battleships from the Red Sea and the stability of navigation in its important passages, Saudi Arabia has begun to move the Red Sea file. What are the dimensions of the Saudi move at this time?
Exclusive – Al-Khabar Al-Yemeni:
Throughout approximately 9 months of confrontation between Yemeni forces and American battleships, Saudi Arabia remained silent, often reaffirming its support of Yemeni operations by justifying it with the Gaza war.
Saudi Arabia had been attempting to await the results of the confrontation and had rejected American offers to join an alliance protecting Israel, despite reports of opening a land route for the occupation through its border territories reaching Jordan.
These Saudi stances were not for the sake of Yemen, against which its waged war and siege for years, but rather to give the US and Britain a drink from the same cup whose bitterness they drank in Yemen, in revenge for their abandonment of it with its military failure in the war it led in March 2015.
Today, with the clear results of the Yemeni forces’ victory in the Red Sea battle and America’s admission of the absence of its battleships in the Red Sea after withdrawing the aircraft carrier fleet “Eisenhower,” Saudi Arabia has begun to move the Red Sea file.
Within 24 hours, Saudi Arabia placed the Red Sea file on the agenda of several regional and international meetings, starting with discussions held with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and extending to meetings in Cairo and the joint conference with the Saudi Foreign Minister and his Egyptian counterpart, and including the joint statement of the ministerial meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries.
Of course, Saudi Arabia’s talk about the necessity of de-escalation in the Red Sea does not imply stopping the confrontation between Yemen and America, and the latter withdrew in humiliation, but rather an attempt to impose a new reality that prevents Yemeni forces from assuming the tasks of securing the navigational passages in the Red Sea, which Yemen overlooks its most important corridors, especially if the phrase “respecting maritime navigation in accordance with international conventions” is read in the recent statements prompted by Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia aims to reset the situation in the Red Sea to square one, and the confrontation has been completed in Sana’a’s favor as Sana’a begins deploying naval patrols in the Red Sea and burning fuel ships from within, as happened with the “Sounion,” another Western vessel. In doing so, it prepares for the repercussions of the Yemeni victory in its most important outlets for exporting oil. This movement is not limited to regional and international pressure on Yemen but also includes offers through an international mediator amid reports of a request for Russian mediation.
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