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Houthis Blast Hunt for Asking them to Withdraw from Hodeidah

British Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, talks to reporters upon his arrival at Aden airport in Aden, Yemen March 3, 2019. (Reuters)
British Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, talks to reporters upon his arrival at Aden airport in Aden, Yemen March 3, 2019. (Reuters)
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Houthis Blast Hunt for Asking them to Withdraw from Hodeidah

British Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, talks to reporters upon his arrival at Aden airport in Aden, Yemen March 3, 2019. (Reuters)
British Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, talks to reporters upon his arrival at Aden airport in Aden, Yemen March 3, 2019. (Reuters)

Senior leaders in the Iran-backed Houthi militias in Yemen attacked on Monday British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and UN Special Envoy Martin Griffiths, after their call for the immediate withdrawal of militias from the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah and implementation of the Stockholm agreement.

Hunt warned that total war and the collapse of the UN-sponsored truce deal await Yemen in coming weeks should warring parties further delay redeployment and the opening of safe passages for humanitarian aid. He also warned that 20 million people are on the brink of starvation as visited the country for the first time.

“We are now in last chance saloon for the Stockholm peace process,” Hunt said in a statement during a visit to Aden. “The process could be dead within weeks if we do not see both sides sticking to their commitments in Stockholm.”

Houthis, however, have been uncooperative and employed stalling tactics for about two-and-a-half months.

Hussein al-Azzi, deputy foreign minister at the Houthis’ self-proclaimed government, described Hunt as “provocative.” In a threatening tweet, he said the UK top diplomat needs to “choose his words well when speaking about Houthis,” claiming that the militia represents some “24 million Yemenis.”

On the Houthis’ fallback policy, Azzi threatened that the group has “a war it has not yet used,” referring to the militants’ amassing of forces since the Stockholm agreement was signed on December 18.

Houthi Foreign Minister Mohamed Abdelsalam Fleeta also issued a lengthy statement in which he responded to Hunt’s request of immediate withdrawal of troops from Hodeidah city, where the militant group smuggles most of its Iran-provided weapons.

Fleeta denied that the Stockholm agreement did not mandate a third neutral party to take over management and monitoring at the port, accusing Arab Coalition countries, backing the internationally-recognized government headed by Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, of lobbying alongside the UK to “violate the deal”.

He also claimed that the UN Redeployment Coordination Committee (RCC), assigned to monitor the implementation of the agreement, is compromised by orders it receives from pro-government supporters in the West.

More so, the group claimed it had accepted “a United Nations supervisory role in Hodeidah” only in principle. It reiterated that it has not conceded to handing over the strategic Red Sea ports to the constitutionally-elected government.

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Israel’s Retaliatory Responses to Houthis Must Begin by Drawing Intelligence Plan

A person inspects damage at the site where a projectile fired from Yemen landed in Tel Aviv on December 21, 2024 (EPA)
A person inspects damage at the site where a projectile fired from Yemen landed in Tel Aviv on December 21, 2024 (EPA)
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Israel’s Retaliatory Responses to Houthis Must Begin by Drawing Intelligence Plan

A person inspects damage at the site where a projectile fired from Yemen landed in Tel Aviv on December 21, 2024 (EPA)
A person inspects damage at the site where a projectile fired from Yemen landed in Tel Aviv on December 21, 2024 (EPA)

Israel is considering options to respond to repeated attacks fired from Yemen in the past few days, the latest of which was a Houthi missile strike that injured more than a dozen people in Tel Aviv.
But military experts say Israel should first consider an intelligence plan for confronting the new front after it faced significant difficulties in both defending against and responding to the Houthi attacks.
On Saturday morning, Houthis launched a missile that triggered sirens throughout central Israel at 3:44 am. It was the second attack since Thursday.
Israel's military said the projectile landed in Tel Aviv's southern Jaffa area, adding that attempts to intercept a missile from Yemen failed.
“The incident is still being thoroughly investigated,” the army said, adding that following initial investigations by the Israeli Air Force and Home Front Command, “some of the conclusions have already been implemented, both regarding interception and early warning.”
Israeli military experts say the recent Houthi attacks have revealed serious security gaps in Israel's air defense systems.
“The pressing question now is why none of the other of Israel’s air defense layers managed to intercept the warhead,” wrote Yedioth Ahronoth's Ron Ben-Yishai. “The likely explanation is the late detection and the flat trajectory, which prevented the operation of all available defense apparatus.”
He said these incidents might expose a critical vulnerability in the army’s air defense system protecting Israel’s civilian and military home front.
According to Ben-Yishai, two main reasons might explain Saturday’s interception failure.
The first is that the missile was launched in a “flattened” ballistic trajectory, possibly from an unexpected direction.
As a result, Israeli defenses may not have identified it in time, leading to its late discovery and insufficient time for interceptors to operate.
He said the second, and more likely scenario is that Iran has developed a maneuverable warhead.
Such a warhead separates from the missile during the final third of its trajectory and maneuvers mid-flight—executing pre-programmed course changes—to hit its designated target, he wrote.
And while Israel has launched initial investigations into the failure of Israeli defense systems to intercept the missiles, it is now examining the nature, date and location of its response.
When Houthis launched their first missile attack on Israel last Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned them, saying, “The Houthis will learn the hard way.”
But Israeli political analyst Avi Ashkenazi wrote in the Maariv newspaper that Israel should look at reality with open eyes and say out loud that it cannot deal with the Houthi threat from Yemen, and has failed to face them.
Last Thursday, 14 Israeli Air Force fighter jets, alongside refuelers and spy planes, flew some 2,000 kilometers and dropped over 60 munitions on Houthi “military targets” along Yemen’s western coast and near the capital Sanaa.
The targets included fuel and oil depots, two power stations, and eight tugboats used at the Houthi-controlled ports.
But the Maariv newspaper warned about the increasing involvement of Iran in supporting the Houthi forces.
“Iran has invested more in the Houthis in recent weeks following the collapse of the Shiite axis, making the Houthi movement a leader of this axis,” the newspaper noted.
Underscoring the failures of Israel’s air defense systems, Maariv said the “Arrow” missile defense system, Israel's main line of defense against ballistic missiles, had failed four times in a row to intercept missiles, including three launched from Yemen and one from Lebanon.
Yedioth Ahronoth's Ben-Yishai also warned that the threat posed by maneuvering warheads on Iran's heavy, long-range missiles would become existential for Israel should Iran succeed in developing nuclear warheads for these missiles.
Meanwhile, Israel’s Channel 12 said that in recent months, the Middle East has changed beyond recognition.
The channel said that for the first time in more than half a century, a direct and threat-free air corridor has been opened to Iran through the Middle East. Israel will benefit from this corridor to launch almost daily attacks on the border crossings between Syria and Lebanon, it said.
Channel 12 also reported that according to the Israeli military, the new threat-free corridor will help Israel launch a future attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.
“From Israel's perspective, the fall of the Assad regime and the collapse of the Iranian ring of fire are changing the balance of power in the Middle East,” the report added.