Yemen

Developments in conflicts across the world that you might have missed this week.

Developments in conflicts across the world that you might have missed this week.

The Gulf nation’s ground troops have cultivated alliances in Yemen with local armed groups, but its ability to shape the civil war’s outcome is limited.

The Five Questions Series is a forum for scholars, government officials, civil society leaders, and foreign policy practitioners to provide timely analysis of new developments related to the advancement of women and girls worldwide.

U.S. Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo said yesterday at his Senate confirmation hearings that he would actively try to “fix” the Iran deal, working with U.S. allies to “achieve a better outcome and a better deal.” The oil market didn’t appear to believe he would succeed. While Pompeo was laying out his views, Brent prices topped $72 a barrel amid reports that there had been an unsuccessful drone strike on Saudi Aramco’s Jizan refinery in southwest Saudi Arabia. The foiled drone attack by Yemeni Houthi rebels was unnerving for two oil-related reasons. Firstly, it was yet another indication that the proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran in the region was both escalating and continuing to target oil related facilities. Secondly, and perhaps even more disturbingly, it was a sign that “asymmetric warfare” posed a greater threat to oil than could have been previously understood. Increasingly, there has been evidence that sub-national groups can build make-shift drones that can deliver payloads into hard to reach targets. The Jizan refinery attack was the first time a makeshift drone attack has been widely reported to have targeted an oil facility. The drone onslaught follows a serious cyber breach that has plagued a commercial safety system used in oil refineries. Both means of warfare pose serious risks not only to the Saudi oil industry but to Western and other regional facilities as well, upping the ante on a host of conflicts that involve Iran.  The United States is due in May to decide whether to take steps that would effectively re-impose oil sanctions against Iran. During his visit to Washington, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman lobbied the Trump administration to reopen the Iranian nuclear deal and pressure Iran for better terms that would ensure Iran never obtains nuclear weapons, rather than the publicly announced terms which reduces the number of Iran’s centrifuges and limits the level of uranium enrichment to 3.67 percent, far below weapons grade, for fifteen years. Under the nuclear deal, Iran is tasked to remove the core of its heavy-water reactor at Arak, capable of producing spent fuel that can yield plutonium.  Last month, European leaders were sounding out the possibility that fresh sanctions be imposed on Iran aimed to moderate the country’s ballistic missile program and its role in regional conflicts in a manner they hope would maintain the Iran nuclear deal. Saudi Arabia is likely to oppose that approach. The Saudi diplomatic message regarding the Iran deal could put the kingdom under pressure to offer to replace Iranian oil that would be lost to buyers, should a re-imposition of oil sanctions against Iran become necessary. Saudi Arabia has failed to act to replace declining Venezuelan oil production, as it could have done in past decades, preferring rather to replenish depleting financial resources by tapping higher oil prices. That has led to divisions within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on what could constitute too high an oil price that would begin to harm oil demand.  Rather than talk publicly about replacing any “sanctioned” barrels, Saudi Arabia has been pushing a plan to have “decadal” cooperation with Russia regarding oil prices. Saudi leaders would like to structure a long lasting agreement that could eliminate the debilitating cyclical swings in oil prices. But it remains unclear how that would be accomplished, short of coordinating investment rates for most of global oil production capital spending, as was tried (also relatively unsuccessfully) by the Seven Sister oil companies back in the post-World War II era. One alternative suggestion, said to be a non-starter among fellow OPEC members, would be to return to the fixed oil price system of the 1970s. That system was undermined when OPEC members were forced to cheat behind each other’s backs using non-transparent, complex price discounting schemes such as barter deals, secretive tanker freight discounts, and extended credit terms to ensure their oil wasn’t replaced by sales by producers offering spot market related pricing.  The appointment of more hawkish foreign policy members to the Trump administration's national security team has already affected Tehran, which has had increased difficulty marketing its oil in recent weeks and is now offering additional discounts to sway buyers who are worried about the effects of future sanctions policy. European companies are considering contingency plans, and Japan reportedly curtailed its oil imports from Iran in March. Some loss of Iranian volume is probably built in to current price levels, but the geopolitical ramifications of escalating conflicts could create more uncertainty in oil markets.  At this particular juncture, from the U.S. point of view, the oil aspect of Iranian sanctions policy could be more tangential compared to concerns about Iran’s role in the various Mideast regional conflicts. The United States has tried to counsel Saudi Arabia to find a way to deescalate the conflict in Yemen but so far, little progress has been made. The United States also would like to fashion a Syria strategy that limits Iran’s role in the Levant. One lever in that process is that neither Russia, Turkey, or Iran are in a financial position to pay for Syria’s reconstruction, creating a possible starting point to assert influence by the United States and its allies. Commentator Hassan al-Hassan argues that now is the ideal time for the United States to make a strong response to test whether the current facts on the ground render President Bashar al-Assad as suddenly more dispensable to his own supporters. He suggests whatever actions the United States takes be designed to force parties to abandon the military option. U.S. sanctions moves that recently cratered $12 billion in the wealth of Kremlin insiders and hampered their ability to work with large commodity traders were a step in the right direction.    

Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post, covering March 16 to March 26, was compiled with support from Alexandra Bro, Anne Connell, and Rebecca Hughes.

Averting famine will require Saudi Arabia to permit the resumption of commercial shipping of food and fuel to the besieged country.

Saudi Arabia pressed Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to resign to try to weaken Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. The path to resolving the crisis could run through Yemen.

Reading selections for the weekend of August 4, 2017.

You probably missed it, but Saturday was the second anniversary of President Barack Obama’s worst and most indefensible foreign policy decision. Late on the evening of March 25, 2015, the White House posted a statement from National Security Council spokesperson Bernadette Meehan on its website: “President Obama has authorized the provision of logistical and intelligence support to GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council]-led military operations. While U.S. forces are not taking direct military action in Yemen in support of this effort, we are establishing a Joint Planning Cell with Saudi Arabia to coordinate U.S. military and intelligence support.” With only that quiet statement—and absent a single congressional hearing or any public debate—the United States became a co-combatant in yet another open-ended war of choice in the Middle East. My latest column in Foreign Policy recognizes the two years of U.S. support for the Saudi Arabia-led intervention in Yemen, which has devastated Yemeni infrastructure and killed an estimated five thousand civilians—but has brought Saudi Arabia no closer to defeating Houthi rebels: As the U.N. Panel of Experts documented in its excellent report released in January, the Saudi-led coalition has violated international humanitarian law and human rights law with its use of air power at least 10 times in 2016. The 10 documented strikes resulted in “292 civilian fatalities, including at least 100 women and children.” Most horrific was the Oct. 8, 2016, “double-tap” bombing of a community hall in the capital of Sanaa that resulted in at least 827 civilian fatalities and injuries. The airstrike targeted a funeral gathering, first with a U.S.-supplied “GBU-12 Paveway II guidance unit fitted to a Mark 82 high explosive aircraft bomb,” dropped at 3:20 p.m., followed by a second one minutes later as mourners were still reeling. As the U.N. report notes, “the air campaign waged by the coalition led by Saudi Arabia, while devastating to Yemeni infrastructure and civilians, has failed to dent the political will of the Houthi-Saleh alliance to continue the conflict.” Yesterday, the Washington Post and Foreign Policy reported that President Donald Trump may expand U.S. military support for the Saudi-led bombing campaign. This includes more operational planning, logistics, and refueling support, and may also feature direct support for an Emirati-led ground intervention against a Red Sea port held by Houthi forces. These measures are being debated and approved faster than under the Obama administration because, according to one Pentagon official, the absence of civilian leaders means “the [Pentagon hierarchy] has flattened, so from a military perspective you have a little more agility, and can make decisions more quickly,” adding “the military has a bias to action and we’d rather act than sit there and ponder it forever.” Another senior administration official indicated that the United States must support whatever the Saudi-led coalition does because the situation may escalate, “and our partners may take action regardless. And we won’t have visibility, and we won’t be in a position to understand what it does to our counterterrorism operations.” Both of these sentiments should be disconcerting given the aimlessness and unfolding tragedy of the two-year, U.S.-supported intervention in Yemen. One would hope that the Trump administration’s rush to further deepen U.S. military involvement in the Middle East would generate interest and criticism among Congress, major media outlets, and the American public. But given the relative free-hand and limited oversight that has come to characterize the United States’ forever war, I would not expect any coherent opposition, or even sustained attention. Again, for my full thoughts see today’s column, and also what I warned of with a column two years ago: “Make No Mistake — the United States Is at War in Yemen.”