Aide in the Yemeni Presidential Leadership Council Ahmed Saleh said the Iran-backed Houthi militias’ attacks on Red Sea shipping are part of their attempts to shirk their responsibilities towards peace.
In an interview to Asharq Al-Awsat, he noted that the attacks started taking place days before the agreements related to a UN-sponsored peace roadmap were to be signed.
Moreover, he remarked that Washington’s re-designation of the Houthis as terrorist is a positive step, but “it’s not enough.”
“We need for than his. The move does not rise up to the threat posed by the Houthis and the danger they pose to international navigation,” he added.
“The designation will be worthless if it doesn’t have an actual impact on this extremist terrorist group,” he warned.
“The government was the one to offer concessions to build bridges to reach peace,” he added.
On the other hand, the Houthis and the Iranians behind them, have exploited the current circumstances to create crises and shirk responsibilities by stirring chaos, Saleh explained.
“The state is keen on peace, but the Houthis and Iranians are not looking for just sustainable peace,” he lamented.
The developments in the Red Sea are the greatest evidence that the Houthis don’t want peace. They will use the Palestinian cause to avoid their responsibilities and they are promoting this claim before their supporters, he continued.
He noted that the Houthis’ terrorist designation “has veered us off the peace path, but we will remain ready for peace anyway.”
“If the Houthis are not defeated and their project in Yemen is not eliminated, then their harm will not be limited to the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, but will spill over to other regions. The cost of eliminating them then will be much higher than it is now,” he warned.
Greater coordination
Saleh also criticized the state of cooperation between the legitimate government and the American administration. “The cooperation does not reflect the level of threats and challenges in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden,” he remarked.
“We hope there will be greater coordination and support in the future,” he stated, citing “joint interests and the Yemeni cause that is recognized by the international community and relevant international resolutions.”
“All we want is support to the state and its institutions so that we can stop this global threat, which is primarily negatively impacting the lives of the Yemeni people on the economic, political and military levels,” he went on to say.
‘Strangled the world’
Furthermore, he ruled out that the Houthi attacks were tied to the Israeli war on Gaza, revealing that the militias had carried out 18 piracy operations in the Red Sea even before the conflict erupted. He also noted their planting of marine mines in the Red Sea.
He said past experience has proven that strikes, whether by air or by sea, will not decide the war.
“We have nine years' experience of war with them. So, we know how they operate, what tactics they use and the means at their disposal,” he continued.
“Based on this, we believe that the air strikes will achieve very little. If they really want to make a real achievement against the militias, then the strikes must continue, but real and effective coordination must also take place between the Americans, and the coalition it is leading, with the Yemeni government and Arab coalition,” he stressed.
The Houthis “have strangled the world” at the Bab al-Mandeb Strait through which over 20 percent of global trade passes, he noted. This strait is very important and the developments there will have a direct and indirect impact on very important countries.
Saleh added that it was “naive” to believe that the attacks in the Red Sea were solely tied to Gaza. “This is not true at all because the Houthis have been practicing piracy in the area and they have carried out over 18 operations before the developments unfolded in Gaza,” he said, while also citing the smuggling of Iranian weapons to the militias.
“The Houthis are an Iranian proxy, and they receive everything they need from the Iranian regime. They receive their orders from Tehran, not Sanaa,” he said.
Saleh underlined the importance of liberating the Hodeidah province from the Houthis, saying it is a vital supply route from Iran.
He said the Yemeni forces have a plan in place to liberate it, but they need support from the Arab coalition and logistic support from “friends, starting with the Americans.”
History of Houthis
Saleh remarked that many people believe that the Houthi terrorists are a recent arrival in Yemen. “This is not true,” he stressed. “The movement was first formed in the late 1970s and then transformed into a main organization in the early 1980s.”
It was then headed by Badreddine al-Houthi and its first terrorist act was documented in Yemen in 1983. The Houthis attacked cinemas in Sanaa and later that year, a fatwa was issued against women and female students at universities. They were attacked with acid, leaving them with scars and burns. Several women were killed during that period.
“The Houthis were born of terrorist extremist ideology that doesn’t believe in equality or the state and its institutions,” Saleh said.
