Yemen's Houthi forces fired droned missiles at the heart of Saudi Arabia's oil industry on 8th Feb Sunday, which included a Saudi Aramco facility located in Ras Tanura vital to petroleum exports To the US and the rest of the world, the Riyadh called it a failed assault on global energy security.
The Saudi energy ministry said there were no casualties or loss of property from the attacks. The Saudi defense ministry said it intercepted an armed drone coming from the sea before hitting its target at an oil storage yard at Ras Tanura, which is a site of a refinery and the world's biggest offshore oil loading facility.
Projectiles from a ballistic missile fell near a residential compound in Dhahran used by state-controlled Saudi Aramco, the world's biggest Saudi Arabian public petroleum and natural gas company, the ministries said.
The attacks drove Brent crude prices above $70 a barrel to their highest since January 2020.
The sites are located on the Gulf coast across the Persian Gulf, which is home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet consists of an Aircraft Carrier Battle Group (CVBG), an Amphibious Ready Group (ARG), surface combatants, and submarines. Yemen lies thousands of km southwest on the Gulf of Aden.
Announcing the attacks, the Houthis, battling a Saudi-led coalition for six years, also said they attacked military targets in the Saudi cities of Dammam, Asir and Jazan.
"Such acts of sabotage do not only target the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but also the security and stability of energy supplies to the world, and therefore, the global economy," an interior ministry spokesman said in a statement on state media.
ESCALATION
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea said on Sunday that the group had fired 14 drones and eight ballistic missiles in a "wide operation in the heart of Saudi Arabia".
The Houthis recently stepped up across-border attacks on Saudi Arabia at a time when the United States Biden administration and the United Nations are pushing for a ceasefire and withdraw troops being stationed in Yemen and opted for peace negotiations to end the war
Last Thursday, the movement said it fired a missile at an Aramco petroleum products distribution plant in the Red Sea city of Jeddah which the Houthis had attacked in November 2020 as an act of revenge, hitting a storage tank. Aramco and Saudi authorities have not commented about Thursday's claim.
The military alliance intervened in Yemen in March 2015 after the Houthis ousted the Saudi-backed government from power in the capital, Sanaa. The conflict is widely seen in the region as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Earlier, the coalition said it conducted airstrikes on Houthi military targets in Sanaa and other Yemeni regions on Sunday and warned that "civilians and civilian objects in the Kingdom are a red line".
Last week, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on two Houthi military leaders in the first punitive measures against the group by President Joe Biden's administration following the increase in attacks on Saudi cities and made battles in Yemen's Marib region intense.
In February, Biden declared a halt to U.S. support for offensive operations.
Let us understand what led to the attacks and history between the two Arab Countries and Middle-east in general.
Currently, there has been 4 failing states (Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen) and three wars (Iraqi War, the Syrian war and Yemen war) with major powers increasingly taking opposite sides. The region has seen conflicts after conflicts going back well after the 20th Century, but among all the wars, uprisings, and insurgencies two countries seemed to always have been involved Saudi Arabia and Iran. They are bitter rivals and their feud is the key to understanding the conflicts in the Middle-East.
The Saudis and the Iranians never fought directly but instead, they fight indirectly by opposing other sides and countries and inciting conflicts this is called Proxy warfare like of which was seen during the cold war between America and The Soviet. It has a devastating effect on the region countries especially poor ones can’t function if other larger countries pull strings from behind.
Like the U.S the Soviets in the Cold War Saudi Arabia and Iran are bitter rivals instead of fighting for world dominance, they are fighting over control of the Middle-east.
To understand the rivalry let’s go back to history. In the early 1900s, Saudi Arabia was under the control of the Ottoman Empire. After WW1 the empire has collapsed the tribes in the region to fight over each other to gain power, one tribe from the interior of the al-Saud eventually concurred most of the part of the peninsula. In 1932 they were recognized as the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 6 years later huge oil reserves were discovered in Saudi Arabia and in an instant the monarchy was rich. That oil money was used in building roads and cities all around the desert country and it helped to forge an alliance with the U.S, on the eastern side of the gulf another country was emerging but having a harder time. Iran Also had huge oil reserves and an even bigger Muslim Population but foreign interventions were creating chaos since the British and Soviets invaded the country twice.
In 1953 the US secretly staged a coup removing the popular PM Mohammad Mosaddagh, in his place, they pop up a Monarch Reza Shah who is aggressively modernizing Iran in a secular westernized nation with pre-existing corruption and terrorizing the population with secret police SAVA. The Shah ruled Iran for 38 years. When he left Iran the Iranian government was changed to the Islamic Republic by Islamic Revolution. Soon afterward, the Iranian Students Movement (Tahkim Vahdat), with the backing of the new government took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held most of the diplomats hostage for 444 days. Relations between the two countries have not been good ever since. For example, the U.S. has imposed various types of economic sanctions against Iran. The U.S. claims Iran supports terrorist groups against Israel. Iran does not recognize Israel as a state. Iran, along with most Arab countries believes that Israel does not have the right to occupy the land of Palestinians.
It is when in 1979 the Islamic Revolution led by the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini overthrew the shah’s 38-year rule the real tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran begun.
The Iranian Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Shah, who was supported by the United States, and its eventual replacement with an Islamic republic under the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution, supported by various leftist and Islamist organizations and Iranian student movements.
The Shah was perceived by many Iranians as beholden to – if not a puppet of – a non-Muslim Western power (the United States) whose culture was contaminating that of Iran.
Demonstrations against the Shah commenced in October 1977, developing into a campaign of civil resistance that included both secular and religious elements and intensified in January 1978. Between August and December 1978, strikes and demonstrations paralyzed the country. The Shah left Iran for exile on January 16, 1979, as the last Persian monarch, leaving his duties to a regency council and an opposition-based prime minister. Ayatollah Khomeini was invited back to Iran by the government and returned to Tehran to a greeting by several million Iranians. The royal reign collapsed shortly after on February 11, when guerrillas and rebel troops overwhelmed troops loyal to the Shah in armed street fighting, bringing Khomeini to official power. Iran voted by national referendum to become an Islamic Republic on April 1, 1979, and approved a new theocratic-republican constitution whereby Khomeini became Supreme Leader of the country in December 1979.
The revolution was unusual for the surprise it created throughout the world: it lacked many of the customary causes of revolution (defeat at war, a financial crisis, peasant rebellion, or disgruntled military), occurred in a nation that was enjoying relative prosperity, produced profound change at great speed, was massively popular, resulted in the exile of many Iranians and replaced a pro-Western semi-absolute monarchy with an anti-Western authoritarian theocracy based on the concept of Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists (or velayat-e faqih). It was a relatively non-violent revolution and helped to redefine modern revolutions although there was violence in its aftermath.
Cause
Reasons advanced for the occurrence of the revolution and its populist, nationalist and, later, Shi’a Islamic character include a conservative backlash against the Westernizing and secularizing efforts of the Western-backed Shah, a liberal backlash to social injustice, a rise in expectations created by the 1973 oil revenue windfall and an overly ambitious economic program, anger over a short, sharp economic contraction in 1977–78, and other shortcomings of the previous regime.
The Saudis were fearful that Ayatollah’s uprising will inspire their own peoples to rise up against them.
There are religious sides too, up until now the Saudi’s have claimed to be the leader of the Muslim population all around the world as Two of the Islamic holy sites, Macca and Madina were situated in Saudi Arabia.
The Khomeini’s revolution rule made Iran the legitimate Muslim-sate, there is another divide Saudi Arabia’s state is mostly Sunnis the majority sect of Islam whereas Khomeini's Iran was mostly Shi’a.
The Shia, the Sunni divide may not be the cause of the rivalry it but was an important division. After the 1980s the Saudi’s fear came alive when Iran started exporting its revolution, also when Iran backed mostly Shia’s in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia to over through the government according to some CIA reports. The stage was set.
In September 1980 Iraq led by Saddam Hussein invaded neighboring Iran. The war lasted almost eight years, ending in a stalemate on 20 August 1988 when Iran accepted an UN-brokered ceasefire. Iraq's rationale for the invasion was primarily to cripple Iran and prevent Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini from exporting the 1979 Iranian Revolution movement to Shia-majority Iraq and threaten the Sunni-dominated Ba'athist leadership. Iraq had also wished to replace Iran as the dominant state in the Persian Gulf, which was before this point not seen as feasible by the Iraqi leadership due to pre-revolutionary Iran's colossal economic and military might, as well as its close alliances with the United States and Israel. The war followed a long-running history of border disputes, as a result of which Iraq had planned to annex Iran's oil-rich Khuzestan Province and the east bank of the Shatt al-Arab (also known in Iran as the Arvand Rud).
The eight years of war-exhaustion, economic devastation, decreased morale, military stalemate, lack of international sympathy against the use of weapons of mass destruction against Iranian civilians by Iraqi forces, and increased U.S.–Iran military tensions all led to the ceasefire brokered by the United Nations.
Fast-forward 15 years Iraq again became the scene of proxy war. In 2003 Us invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussain. Neither Saudi Arabia nor Iran wanted this to happen has Iraq acted as a buffer state between the both but problems arose when the US struggled to replace Saddam.
Without a government the armed militants mostly Shia and Sunni's groups take control over Iraq splitting the population. Most were radical Extremists who saw the opportunity to gain power in the middle of the chaos. These militants were ready-made proxies for Saudi Arabia and Iran and they both see the opportunity to gain access to power. Saudi Arabia started sending arms and support to the Sunnis and Iran to the Shias. That trend continued since the Arab Spring(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring) that had very different consequences for Saudi Arabia and Iran.
They started supporting a number of countries on the basis of Shia and Sunni divide, for example in countries like Morocco, Bahrain, Libya, Lebanon, etc.
Now the feud is going to step further with both countries deploying their militaries.
Now let's come to today’s News.
In Yemen the Saudi military is on the ground helping the central government, they are fighting against Rebels called Houthis who are Iranian proxy groups. Shia–Sunni conflict in Yemen involves the Shia insurgency in northern Yemen. Both Shia and Sunni dissidents in Yemen have similar complaints about the government—cooperation with the American government and an alleged failure to following Sharia law —but it's the Shia who have allegedly been singled out for government crackdown. These Cold wars are becoming incredibly unpredictable as middle-east continues to de-stabilize it’s hard to say how far these countries will go.
Which in turn is the main cause of Sunday’s drone attack on Saudi Arabian soil.
It can also be explained as an act of revenge of drone attacks over Houthi militants.
The drone attack on a Yemeni government base by the rebel Houthi movement has reportedly killed six soldiers.
The drone exploded above a podium at al-And base, in the southern province of Lahj, where high-ranking officers and officials were watching a parade.
Medics said army deputy chief of staff Gen Saleh al-Zindani and Lahj governor Ahmed al-Turki were among those hurt.
A Houthi-run TV channel said the rebels had targeted personnel from the Saudi-led coalition backing the government.
The attack threatens to derail UN peace efforts, which last month saw both sides agree to a ceasefire around the lifeline Red Sea port of Hudaydah, which is crucial to the delivery of aid supplies.
Saudi-owned TV channels described the drone as "Iranian made" whereas Iran has denied supplying weapons to the rebels. But a UN panel of experts said last year that the Houthis' Qasef-1 drone was "virtually identical in design, dimensions, and capability" to Iran's Ababil-T drone.
Yemeni Information Minister Moammar al-Eryani tweeted that "the crime of targeting the base will not go unanswered".
The attack, he added, showed the Houthis did "not believe in the language of peace" and "only understand the language of weapons".
The attack comes a day after the UN special envoy to Yemen said the warring parties had largely stuck to the ceasefire around Hudaydah.
However, Martin Griffiths told the UN Security Council that "substantial progress" was needed before further talks could be held on ending the war.
Yemen has been devastated by a conflict that escalated in early 2015 when the Houthis seized control of much of the west of the country and forced President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi to flee abroad.
Alarmed by the rise of a group they saw as an Iranian proxy, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and seven other Arab states intervened in an attempt to restore the government.
At least 6,800 civilians have been killed and 10,700 injured in the fighting, according to the UN. Thousands of more civilians have died from preventable causes, including malnutrition, disease, and poor health.
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