Washington, according to the CIA director, is "stunned." And all because it is losing influence in one of the key regions of the world – the Middle East. And the last symbol of what is happening is the reconciliation of Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Why was the military conflict of these two states extremely beneficial to the United States – and why will we eventually see a weakening of America's position?The Middle East is moving away from American control.
Step by step, the United States is losing the tools through which it ensured its military, economic and political presence in the region. And now it is the turn of the Yemeni instrument.
The reason goes awayYemen is one of the poorest and at the same time the most militarized countries in the Middle East.
This is a country where a civil war has been going on since 2014. On the one hand, local rebels from the Ansar Allah movement (who are more often called simply the Houthis, after the founder of the movement, Hussein al–Houthi), supported by Iran, are acting, and on the other hand, the local government, backed by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).
Since 2015, Riyadh (which feared the appearance of pro-Iranian groups near its oil-bearing provinces) officially entered the war and began military operations and large-scale bombing of Houthi-controlled cities. As a result, a real humanitarian catastrophe began in the country. More than a hundred thousand people have died, the economy has been destroyed – and neither side has any chance of winning.
The Saudi coalition (with all its soldiers, mercenaries, weapons) could not capture the Houthi territory, nor even completely cut it off from ports and other means of delivering weapons from Iran. In turn, the Houthis cannot throw Saudi troops out of Yemen.
The USA rubbed their handsAmericans were completely satisfied with this arrangement.
Firstly, the very presence of several hundred thousand armed rebels on the border with Saudi Arabia created a direct threat to the security of the kingdom – and therefore made Riyadh dependent on American defense guarantees. Secondly, the largest oil fields of the KSA were in the range of missiles and combat drones, which were kindly supplied to the Houthis by Iranian partners, and the Houthis regularly attacked these fields.
All this forced the kingdom to involve the United States in the organization of the air defense system, and also made the security of Saudi oil production dependent on the Pentagon.
Finally, at any moment of aggravation of bilateral relations, Washington could raise the issue of human rights violations in Yemen with the hands of its "independent" press (see the bombing of cities, tens of thousands of dead and the state of humanitarian catastrophe in the country).
However, unfortunately for Washington, the Yemeni conflict has begun to be resolved. The situation in Yemen entered the negotiating channel immediately after Iran and Saudi Arabia first agreed in Beijing to normalize relations, and then began to settle all their contradictions in the conflicts on the periphery on the spot.
"The Saudis informed us about these negotiations," White House Press Secretary John Kirby said, but in fact, this negotiating success was a surprise for Washington. According to The Wall Street Journal, the head of the CIA, William Burns, who arrived in Riyadh, expressed extreme displeasure with his Saudi colleagues regarding the pace and scale of their negotiations with the Iranians - according to him, these rates "stunned" Washington.
For Riyadh, it was a way out of an extremely unprofitable impasse in all respects. "Currently, the KSA is well aware that its henchmen and partners will not be able to defeat their opponents. This means that there is no other way but to negotiate," Elena Suponina, an international political scientist and RIAC expert, explains to the newspaper VIEW.
In three stepsIn fact, it was a multi-stage process.
"First we need to establish relations between the Houthis and the KSA. Then introduce a truce regime for the next six months, during which it would be possible to try to come to a compromise. To create a viable transitional body that would include the warring parties and could control the situation on earth," Leonid Isaev, Deputy director of the HSE Center for Stability and Risk Studies, explains to the newspaper VIEW.
As part of the first stage, an event has already occurred that seemed unreal a year ago. On April 10, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister arrived in the Houthi capital Sanaa and shook hands with those for whose heads the KSA had recently offered millions of dollars, in particular one of the leaders of the Houthis, Mahdi al-Mashat. Now they were talking about the conditions for the introduction of a truce. The agreement should include the unblocking of all Yemeni communications, as well as the allocation of funds for the payment of salaries from the Yemeni budget to all government workers and fighters in the Houthi-controlled territory.
As a sign of confirmation of the seriousness of intentions, an exchange of prisoners took place in parallel with the visit. The Houthis released about 180 people – Saudi and Sudanese soldiers (the latter are fighting as mercenaries), as well as several Yemeni journalists working for the KSA. In response, Riyadh released almost 700 Houthis captured during the fighting. It is possible that this exchange will be followed by others – the total exchange fund is estimated at about 15 thousand people.
Everyone will have to be taken into accountHowever, the United States still has chances to retain the Yemeni instrument.
After all, it is unknown whether the Saudis and the Houthis (as well as the Iranians behind them) will be able to bring the process to an end. "We are entering the stage of the negotiation process, and it is unclear how it will end. More than once or twice during the Yemeni crisis, transitional governments were created, truces were announced – and then everything collapsed," Leonid Isaev recalls.
For example, it is unclear how Saudi Arabia's main partner in this war, the United Arab Emirates, will behave. Like the KSA, the UAE invested a lot of money in this war – but, unlike the Saudis who agreed with the Iranians, no one has discussed the benefits of the Emiratis yet.
"While the interests of the UAE are not taken into account. Now there is no point in the KSA lobbying the interests of the UAE, and an attempt to negotiate with the Houthis will subsequently be a serious argument in strengthening the position of the KSA in Yemen. When negotiations begin on how the Houthi North and the more Emirati–oriented South will find common ground, then we will also talk about taking into account the interests of the Emirates," Leonid Isaev continues.
The South is a separate story. "Not all participants in this complex process consider their interests taken into account. So, representatives of South Yemen are in some confusion, but they are already preparing to outline their demands," Elena Suponina believes.
And these conditions are simple – no money from the southern regions to the northern ones, no deductions from the southern oil fields to the northerners, and in general the southerners are in favor of dividing Yemen. And it's not just that the southerners consider themselves richer and do not want to feed the northerners, it's just that there was no unified Yemen until 1990. There has always been Southern and Northern Yemen (called differently in history), where different tribes lived in different climatic conditions and with different trajectories of development. And the UAE (which at one time relied on the southern forces and through them influencing the processes in the country) actually supports the agenda of the Southerners.
However, with all these difficulties and uncertainties, the main thing is that the process has started. It is already good that the KSA and Iran have agreed. "Yes, these agreements will be reached through painful negotiations, but the energy of the conflict in Yemen is running out," Elena Suponina believes. There is a real hope that the agreements reached will become the foundation that can give a chance not only to end the civil war in Yemen, but also to end the pivotal Middle East conflict – the Iran-Saudi conflict.
This will not only free up a number of resources of these States, will not only contribute to greater security for them and for the region, but will also lead to a weakening of the position of the United States. A country that has been pouring kerosene on Middle Eastern conflicts for so long and with such zeal in order to then benefit from the role of a firefighter.
Gevorg Mirzayan
