Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Iran in Yemen

According to Pomegranate, Iran really is intervening in Yemen:
Iran’s interest in Yemen is comparatively recent. But Western diplomats who used to cast doubt on the claims of Yemen’s former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, that Iran backed the Houthis, a rebel group in the country’s far north, are no longer so sceptical. Iran, they now generally reckon, backs not only the Houthis in the north but also secessionists in the south.
The details, to do with a series of alleged intercepted Iranian arms shipments to Yemen, remain murky. But it is clear that Iran is providing media and financial support to some Yemeni factions. Politicians and activists alike admit that they have been solicited by Iranian representatives with offers of cash and free trips. Both the Houthis and the more hardline southern rebels run television stations in the south of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, where Hizbullah, an Iran-backed party-cum-militia, holds sway.
The headline for the article is "The Spreading Sectarian Rift," but that seems misleading, almost as if it were decided on before the situation were understood.  If it were just Iranian support for the Houthis, who are Shi'ites of the Zaydi subsect, maybe, but if Iran is almost support the entirely Shi'ite southern  secessionists, they are just trying to win influence for themselves at the expense of the Arab Gulf states.

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