Barely four days after all sides in the Yemeni conflict welcomed the call for a ceasefire in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, the war seems to be escalating yet again and threatening to undo whatever little progress had been made.

Hostilities Flare Up Once Again

The tit-for-tat re-escalation started again on Saturday night when Houthis fired a number of rockets and drones towards Saudi Arabia, causing minor injuries to two Saudi citizens.

“Saudi Air Defense Forces intercepted 2 ballistic missiles launched by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia towards #Riyadh and #Jazan,” the Kingdom’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweeted on Sunday morning.

Reuters reported later the same day that a military spokesman for Houthis took responsibility for launching rockets and drones at “sensitive” sites in Riyadh and at economic and military sites in Jazan and Asir, near the Yemeni border.

First Major Houthi Attack in Almost One Year

This was the first major Houthi offensive against the Kingdom after the rocket attack at the oil field last September, post which things calmed down a little, giving a temporary relief to the war-torn country.

“I am gravely dismayed and disappointed by these actions at a time when the Yemeni public’s demands for peace are unanimous and louder than ever before. Yemen needs its leaders to focus every minute of their time on averting and mitigating the potentially disastrous consequences of a Covid-19 outbreak,” said UN Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths.

Saudi Arabia Hits Back

Much to Griffiths’ dismay, the fight was taken one further notch upwards on Monday with the Saudis retaliating through air strikes on Yemen’s capital of Sanaa, including sites in the presidential palace compound and a military school. As per Reuters, the coalition struck “legitimate military targets including Houthi ballistic batteries which threaten civilian lives.”

After the outbreak of the contagious coronavirus — which doesn’t discriminate along national, sectarian or ideological lines — United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres in a March 25 statement urged “those fighting in Yemen to immediately cease hostilities, focus on reaching a negotiated political settlement and do everything possible to counter a potential outbreak of Covid‑19.”

What if Yemen Gets Coronavirus?

So far, Yemen has not reported any cases of the coronavirus but that is likely because no tests have been done. Its outbreak could wreak further havoc for the country already facing one of the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

As for the uptick in fighting, the head of the Houthi-government’s national negotiation delegation Mohammed Abdulsalam iterated that there was no option left for the military but to respond to continued Saudi aggression and thus “defend the dignity of the nation”.

This is part of a brewing conflict that resumed in the end of January, with hundreds getting killed across a series of attacks including on Yemeni defense minister in which he narrowly escaped death. Just in March alone, the fighting has seen major escalation resulting in the Houthis taking control of Al Jawf, which lies in the country’s north just next to the Saudi border.

Now the next frontier is Marib, the oil-rich province which remains the last stronghold of the Saudi-led coalition government. The Houthis had already started advancing towards the region by Mar 11 and an all-out war for its control will probably shape the future of the country and any prospect of peace.

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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated that world body could not verify that drones and missiles used to attack Saudi’s oil fields last September were from Iran, debunking the US intelligence assessment and Reuters investigation saying that Iran had planned the assault.

The US, European nations, and Saudi blamed Iran for the September 14 incident despite providing no supporting evidence. Tehran denied the alleged involvement in the raid, and Houthi rebels in Yemen claimed responsibility for the attack.

Guterres described the UN examined drones and missiles’ debris used in the Saudi oil facility in Afif in May, in the Abha international airport in June and August, and Saudi Aramco’s oil facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais in mid-September.

“At this time, it is unable to independently corroborate that the cruise missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles used in these attacks are of Iranian origin,” the Portuguese diplomat said in a statement as Reuters reported.

The UN report also added that there was no evidence that the Iran-backed Houthi rebels had types of drones utilized in the aggression in the Aramco refineries.

Previously, Reuters investigation revealed that Iran had planned the Aramco attack in May, approved by Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei under strict conditions: the raid did not target civilians or Americans.

However, Reuters could not verify and confirm its version of incidents with the Iranian leadership. Tehran maintained its innocent, and a Revolutionary Guards spokesman refused to give any comments.

What happened on September 14?

On September 14, drone attacks Saudi’s oil facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais, in the eastern part of the kingdom. Both oil fields are the largest oil fields controlled by Saudi oil giant Saudi Aramco.

Washington accused Iran of masterminding the attack despite the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen’s responsibility for the incident. US President Donald Trump tweeted that there were several reasons to believe who the mastermind of the attack was (without mentioning Iran), adding that Washington was ready for war while waiting for Riyadh’s confirmation.

[We] are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the Kingdom [of Saudi Arabia] as to who they believe was the cause of this attack and under what terms we would proceed!,” tweeted the POTUS.

Saudi Arabia oil supply was attacked. There is reason to believe that we know the culprit, are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 15, 2019

Three days after the attack, Saudi held a press conference aimed at presenting evidence of Iran’s involvement in the attack.

“Data recovered from the computers [on the UAV] shows it’s Iranian,” Defence Ministry spokesman Col Turki al-Malki as BBC quoted. However, he added that his side was still working the find out where the launch point was.

Iran snubbed the US and Saudi’s claim that Tehran was the mastermind of the assault.

The Americans adopted the ‘maximum pressure’ policy against Iran, which, due to its failure, is leaning towards ‘maximum lies,'” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said.

The attack on Aramco refineries disrupted 5.7 million barrels per day of crude oil, said Saudi’s Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman. Also, the assault has intensified the US-Iran tension following Washington’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal or the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Actions).

Military experts were unsure of Iran’s role in the attack

Washington’s claim was based on intelligence images of the incident. However, military experts could not verify whether the drones were from Iran after examining those images.

Ret. Col. Cedric Leighton, an intelligence expert, specializing in imagery, told CNN that those images did not confirm anything as they did not show the exact location of the launch.

“This is the handiwork of a sophisticated (most likely State) actor. The precise nature of the intelligence used to conduct targeting, the mission planning that went into this to avoid radar detection, as well as the selection of the targets, shows a robust capability that would most likely be the work of a government or government-sponsored group, Leighton explained, adding that the drone are most likely either in Iran and Southern Iraq.

Ret.Gen Mark Hertling echoed the statement, saying that those portraits did not mean anything, adding “other than pretty good accuracy on the strike of the oil tanks”.

Any problems with Saudi’s defence?

Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest arms buyer, mostly from the US, therefore, some questions linger; if the attacks were from Iran, how could the sophisticated US radar system not detect two dozen missiles from Iran?

“It’s very hard to imagine a salvo of 17 shots from Iranian territory not being picked up via some land and sea radars,” a former US Navy with an extensive Middle East experience told Business Insider.

If the claim (that Iran was the culprit) were valid, it would humiliate Washington, given the fact that the U.S-backed sanctions have hit Iran after the U.S accused Iran of developing nuclear weapons.

Iran-aligned Houthi rebels, who are fighting the Saudi-led coalition in the Yemen war, claimed to be the attacker of the Saudi Aramco oil fields. Regardless of whoever launched the drones, the UN report shows that the mastermind of the attack is still debatable, and the conflicts in the Middle East show no signs of abating.

L'articolo UN Cannot Verify Iran’s Weapons Attacked Saudi Aramco’s Oil Fields proviene da InsideOver.

Amid reports on the increase of violence in Iran’s recent protests and Iran’s meddling in Iraq, Syria and other regional countries, the United States is considering sending more troops to the Middle East to deter potential Iranian aggression, US defense officials said last week.

On Thursday, December 5, US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy John Rood told senators that Defense Secretary Mark Esper “intends to make some changes” to the number of troops the United States currently deploys in the Middle East.

That same day, US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said President Trump was open to sending more troops to the Middle East.

“If the troops are needed to deter Iran, we have the capacity to move them into the region – although I don’t think that’s happening right now,” O’Brien told Fox News that day.

On Wednesday, a day earlier, the Wall Street Journal reported that the United States may send 14,000 additional troops to the Middle East. The Pentagon’s press secretary, Alyssa Farah, soon refuted the Journal’s reports.

“This reporting by the @WSJ is wrong,” she tweeted. “The US is not sending 14,000 troops to the Middle East to confront Iran.”

But her tweet appeared to discuss the number of troops to be sent to the Middle East, rather than if the United States will do so.

Since last spring, the United States deployed some 14,000 troops to the Middle East, after the series of maritime attacks on oil tankers near Iran and the bombings of Saudi Arabia oil sites, for which Tehran was blamed.

Other government officials said the Pentagon’s options under consideration could send between 5,000 and 7,000 new troops to the Middle East to face potential attacks by Iran.

US officials provided no details to back up why an increase in the number of troops was necessary, but many said the United States was concerned about recent intelligence indications suggesting a possible aggression from Iran.

“We also continue to see indications, and for obvious reasons I won’t go into the details, that potential Iranian aggression could occur,” John Rood also said.

The Pentagon’s deliberations also came after the United States accused Iran of killing more than 1,000 civilians during the country’s recent protests.

Iran caught in economic difficulty due to US sanctions in part, accused foreign interference in its recent anti-government protests and threatened regional countries involved in them.

Brian Hook, the United States’ special representative for Iran, said at the State Department that the United States had received and reviewed exclusive footage Iran’s fatal crackdown on the protests there.

One video, he said, showed the Revolutionary Guards mowing down more than 100 civilians with machine-gun fire in the Iranian city of Mahshahr.

“In this incident alone the regime murdered as many as 100 Iranians and possibly more,” he told reporters at the State Department.

Hook also said that the United States received more than 32,000 submissions, after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on Iranians last month to submit evidence of Iran’s atrocities.

There was no known public video that supported Hook’s allegation of the Mahshahr massacre. Nor was there acceptable claim that the protests’ death toll reached more than 1,000 civilians. Tehran disputed those figures but has refused to give nationwide statistics of the casualties.

Amnesty International said at least 208 people have been killed during the demonstrations and that the number could be higher.

Yet Hook’s numbers were matched with a figure put out on Wednesday by the Iranian exile group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq —a group which paid Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani to deliver speeches at its events in the past.

Alireza Miryousefi, a spokesman for Iran’s mission at the United Nations, also disputed any foreign casualty figures as “purely speculative and highly inaccurate.”

The troops’ increase in number would be a reversal of Trump’s promise to withdraw US military from conflicts he had often called “endless wars”.

When asked about the increase in the number of troops, President Trump told reporters on Thursday, “We’ll announce whether we will or no. Certainly, there might be a threat. And if there is a threat, it will be met very strongly.”

Trump often insists on pulling back troops from the Middle East (the most recent case being the withdrawal from northeast Syria). In October, he said that the Middle East was now less stable and safe than it had been before the United States carried out military interventions there.

“The single greatest mistake our country made in its history was going into the quicksand of the Middle East,” he said.

Nearly all officials who have spoken about an increase in the number of troops deployed in the Middle East have said that no definite decision has been made yet.

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