UAE vows to retaliate for Houthi-claimed attack, doubts over Iran’s role surface

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Yemen’s Houthis claimed on Monday that an attack on Abu Dhabi had the potential to undermine fragile efforts to forge reconciliation between Gulf Arab states and Iran, even for the clear cause of the attack — leading to Fire and tanker explosion kill three – Not yet fully confirmed.

It could also complicate already challenging negotiations between the United States and Iran, which financially and militarily backed the Houthis to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

The UAE government has pledged to hold those responsible for the attack – suspected to have been carried out by a drone – accountable.Already on Tuesday, the Saudi-led coalition that has been at war in Yemen since 2015 Air strikes begin on camps and buildings in the capital, Sana’a According to the coalition, it belongs to Houthi fighters.Strikes around Houthi-controlled cities have so far killed around 20 people, a Houthi official said told Reuters.

But many regional analysts point to what they believe may be the commanding force behind the Houthi attack: Iran. The UAE has been part of the coalition against the Houthis since 2015, and although it drastically reduced troops from the country in 2019, it is still training and supporting the anti-Houthi group.

“I think the problem we have to identify first is the Houthis directly,” Angus Blair, a professor of practice at Cairo University in Egypt, told CNBC on Tuesday. “Nothing will happen without Tehran’s consent or direct involvement.”

Commenting on what it described as only “recent developments related to Yemen,” Iran’s foreign ministry said that “the solution to any regional crisis is not to resort to war and violence.” Its spokesman did not mention the Houthis, according to Reuters. Armed or Emirati attack.

While blaming Iran remains speculative, Iran and Gulf Arab states support opposing sides in numerous regional conflicts, including Yemen, Syria and Lebanon. Saudi Arabia has accused Iran of attacking its oil infrastructure and supplying Yemen’s Houthi rebels with missiles to use against the country, a charge Tehran denies.

Blair and others cite historical examples to support their suspicions. Iran has been supplying missiles and drones to the Houthis for several years as part of a broader proxy war with Saudi Arabia, which began airstrikes in Yemen in early 2015 after the rebel movement took over the Saudi-backed government.

In September 2019, the Houthis initially claimed responsibility for massive attacks on Saudi Aramco’s large Abqaiq and Khurais oil facilities in the country, before Saudi and Western authorities concluded the attacks were directed by Iran. Their intelligence agencies found that the Houthis could not have carried out such a sophisticated attack, although Iran has consistently denied the allegations.

“If you look at the attack on Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia, the Houthis initially said they had carried out the attack, and shortly after that it became clear that the attack came from Iran,” Blair said. “So we have to first make sure it’s the Houthis.”

The strike in Abu Dhabi, which hit the fuel storage facility of state oil company ADNOC, comes as fighting resumes in Yemen. Yemeni militia fighters backed by the UAE recently drove the Houthis out of the oil-rich Shabwa region and delayed their progress in Malib province, where most of Yemen’s oil is located, without which the Houthis could not have done much. A country survives.

In late 2021, news emerged that Riyadh and Tehran had begun exploratory talks, crucial to de-escalating regional tensions, especially with Iran’s new hard-line government. While Riyadh and Tehran have not expressed expectations for any major breakthroughs, both sides have expressed support for de-escalating tensions, and the Biden administration has welcomed the outreach.

Any progress on this front is likely to stall for now.

Ryan Bohl, a Middle East and Africa analyst at Rane, told CNBC: “This appears to be at least a temporary setback between the GCC and Iran talks.” The key question, then, is whether the UAE decides to blame the Tehran attack on the incident, it avoided a series of tanker sabotage bombings off its coast in 2019, which Riyadh and Washington blamed directly on Iran.

“It remains to be seen whether the UAE decides to hold Iran accountable, or whether they do what they did in the past, which ignored Iran’s role in order to avoid escalation,” Pohl said. “At least in the short term, the UAE is likely to part ways with retaliation against Yemen.”

Monday’s attack, claimed by the Houthis as the largest in the country and the first since 2018, “underscores the fragile geopolitical position of the UAE and its role in the war in Yemen, both of which are not conducive to The country’s national and business reputation,” Pohl said.

ADNOC, the site of the alleged drone attack, said it had “initiated the necessary business continuity plans to ensure a reliable, uninterrupted supply of products to customers”. But the fact that the airstrike was able to take place so close to oil facilities and Abu Dhabi International Airport, along with a fire, was a warning sign to many observers. Drones are such a threat because they are usually not detected by radar and other air defense systems.

Torbjorn Soltvedt, principal Middle East and North Africa analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, wrote in an analysis on Monday that the incident “remains a reminder of the highly sophisticated missile and drone threat facing the UAE and other major oil producers in the region.” “Unless GCC countries can find solutions to regional tensions or stem hostility from regional states and non-state actors, they will remain vulnerable.”

Emirati officials deny that their country’s reputation as an island of stability in a troubled region is under threat. “The intervention of terrorist militias in regional stability is too weak to affect the safety and security of our lives,” former UAE foreign minister Anwar Gargash tweeted on Tuesday.

As for the Houthis, the group released propaganda videos threatening to make the UAE an “unsafe place” and pledging to keep taking action against the country.

Veteran Middle East journalist Gregory Johnson tweeted: “The Houthis have shown that they will hold the UAE accountable for the actions of their proxies.” This could plunge the UAE back into Yemen’s more fighting, or spurring more airstrikes on Houthi-held territory.

Still, Ball said, “by limiting retaliation against Yemen” rather than extending it to Iran, “even if it does put the UAE in the tricky position of establishing a credible deterrent against the Houthis, the potential for massive escalation Sexuality will also be reduced … as well as reminding the international community that the UAE is still very active in Yemen, despite its widely publicized so-called withdrawal in 2019.”