Saudi Arabia Launches Military Operations in Yemen
Saudi ambassador to U.S. says 10 countries participating in operations
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states launched airstrikes against rebel forces in Yemen’s capital and across the country in defense of what Riyadh called the nation’s legitimate government.
The attacks began Thursday morning, hours after Yemen’s president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, fled the southern port city of Aden by boat when Iranian-backed Houthi militants closed in.
The decision by Saudi Arabia and the region’s Sunni monarchies to intervene on Mr. Hadi’s behalf raises the stakes in their rivalry with predominantly Shiite Iran, which has raged in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere in the region. The raids also risked further inflaming sectarian tensions that al Qaeda and other jihadist groups in Yemen stand to exploit.
In an added layer of complexity, the intervention comes ahead of a Tuesday deadline for Iran to reach a deal with the U.S. and other powers in Switzerland on Tehran’s nuclear program.
In Washington, Adel Al-Jubeir, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador, said that six Gulf countries and at least four other nations—none of which he named—participated in the military operation. He said the U.S. was consulted on the raid.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-arabia-launches-military-operations-in-yemen-1427275251
Interesting development.
So what you've had with Yemen is a Iran (sunni) was funding terrorism and trying overthrow the government in Yemen which is shia. So, they succeeded a month or two ago or whatever that was.
So I was watching CNN and they said this is going to be a major operation, with 150,000 troops from a coalition that KSA has put together and KSA is leading it. They're aim is to reinstall the fallen shia government, and they view Iran's expansion in the ME as a threat to them (as does Israel).
So.. you see.. you couldn't blame it on USA after all (I remember someone had posted "us backed gov falls in Yemen.") It's a shia sunni regional war, it's Iran on one side and the the others on the other side. And things are complicated for us -- Obama's got us darn near allied to Iran, fighting along side them in Iraq and Syria, and Obama / Kerry pushing this nuke deal for Iran while Israel and KSA and all those are against it.
Meanwhile, KSA disavows ISIS, but fact remains that ISIS is shia.
We'll see what happens with this. It's nice that we aren't involved, and don't have to be -- it's time someone else over there stepped up to handle things in their own region. Now if only we can get the Europeans to start doing that, we'll finally be getting somewhere.
Saudis have the military for it and the money and the gear, so good they're doing it. And we're no part of it, for once. Just gets kind of complicated though, how do we help Iran fight on one front and then our allies are fighting Iran on another front. Pretty mixed up stuff, and ISIS in the mix and they've got to be taken out too yet Iranians aren't any angels either.