Iran should keep its hands out of Yemen’s politics

Tehran’s dabbling in Yemen and elsewhere in the region have had disastrous consequences

The suicide attack in Sanaa yesterday emphasises the need for Iran to stop meddling in Yemeni politics. Photo: Khaled Abdullah / Reuters

National Editorial

As the world focuses its attention on ISIL, another group has quietly become bolder – the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Since taking over Sanaa last month, the Shia militants have plunged the country into an abyss. The situation worsened after the Houthis refused to withdraw from the capital despite agreeing to do so once a neutral prime minister was named. As The National reported yesterday, the militants have now dug their heels in further after president Abdrabbu Mansur Hadi named Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak as prime minister, saying his appointment was against the "will of the nation". Mr Mubarak promptly resigned.

Anyone who thinks the Houthis are acting in Yemen’s best interests is mistaken. They do not even have the right to speak in the name of all the Yemeni people. Rather, their strategy of keeping the country politically unsettled is reminiscent of Hizbollah’s tactics in Lebanon. Despite being small in number, the Houthis are trying to profit from the government’s weakness. Just as Hizbollah has in Lebanon, they are using weaponry to exert disproportionate power on the state. Analysts have warned that even if a political agreement is reached with the government, it will be meaningless because the Houthis refuse to hand in their weapons.

In an interview earlier this year with the pan-Arab newspaper Al Hayat, President Hadi accused Hizbollah of advising and training the Houthis. Both the Houthis and Hizbollah enjoy the support of Iran, which is using Yemen as a platform to subvert and create a threat to Saudi Arabia, its main regional rival. To further its ambitions in the region in this manner, Iran has targeted unstable states such as Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, where it seeks to create a new order.

However, Iran should know how struggles between Sunni and Shia forces have fed a Syrian civil war that threatens to alter the map of the Middle East, has spurred violence that is fracturing Iraq and sparked a revival of transnational jihadi networks that poses a threat beyond the region. Just yesterday, a suicide bomb attack in Sanaa targetting a Houthi checkpoint killed 43 people – one of the worst attacks since the revolution. These outcomes will not benefit anyone. Iran is playing with fire, and, as always, those who get burnt are the people of the region.