Airstrikes on Yemen’s Sanaa International Airport on Monday were intended to stop Iran and the Houthis from breaking a decades-long air blockade and opening an uncontrolled air link between Tehran and its Yemeni proxy, regional analysts said — a corridor they warn could let Iran resupply the Houthis directly with weapons for future campaigns against Saudi Arabia and Israel.
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The incident “fits a long-term pattern of covert Iranian assistance to the Houthis, which remains subject to U.N. Security Council prohibitions,” said Jonathan Ruhe, a fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. “Riyadh wants to prevent the Houthis from recovering after being hit hard by U.S.-Israeli strikes last year, before the counter-Houthi coalition fractured.”
Ruhe said that while the “counter-Houthi coalition is weakened right now,” he noted that the Houthis are also not at full strength.
“Riyadh might be calculating that it’s better to deal with Houthi retaliation now, and to assert the Yemeni government’s authority to keep Iran out of the country, than to stand by and wait for the Houthis to rearm and become a major problem once again,” Ruhe said.
“Riyadh historically has seen Yemen as its own soft underbelly, long before the Houthis ever took Sanaa. Iran is the obvious threat on the kingdom’s front door, but Saudis’ threat perception from the south has always been acute, which leads it to be more assertive in Yemen than people might normally expect,” he continued.
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