{"id":6787,"date":"2017-01-16T21:24:24","date_gmt":"2017-01-17T02:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/?p=6787"},"modified":"2017-01-16T21:24:24","modified_gmt":"2017-01-17T02:24:24","slug":"iran-in-yemen-see-no-evil-hear-no-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/6787\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran in Yemen: See no evil, hear no evil"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"201711613914227533421_See-no-Evil-hear-no-Evil\"Arab news, 16 January 2017<\/strong> – Western leaders have displayed astonishing unwillingness to acknowledge the evidence of their own intelligence agencies and militaries concerning Iranian interference in Yemen and the region.
\nDuring Gen. James Mattis\u2019 Senate hearings for his appointment as defense secretary last week, it emerged the degree to which Barack Obama\u2019s administration had closed its ears to Mattis\u2019 weekly warnings about Iran\u2019s destabilizing role in Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq and elsewhere during his tenure as America\u2019s top military commander in the Middle East.
\nEventually Obama\u2019s team, preoccupied with engaging Iran, had enough of being told what it did not want to hear, and the general was replaced. As Obama\u2019s adviser Dennis Ross relates: \u201cIt was a kind of culture clash. There was such a preoccupation in the White House with not doing things that would provoke Iran or be seen as provocative. Mattis was, by definition, inclined toward doing those things that would be seen as provocative.\u201d
\nIn recent days, the Australian government released photographic evidence of thousands of weapons of Iranian origin, including rocket-propelled grenade launchers, seized in just one raid last year off the Yemen coast. Far greater quantities were impounded in multiple seizures by French, US and other vessels in 2016. Considering the difficulties of patrolling Yemen\u2019s long and inaccessible coastline, these seizures represent the tip of the iceberg.
\nIn November, Conflict Armament Research released an extensive report demonstrating that impounded arms were primarily of Iranian origin. The report talked of a \u201cweapons pipeline extending from Iran to Somalia and Yemen; which involves the transfer, by dhow, of significant quantities of Iranian-manufactured weapons.\u201d A single dhow in March 20 <\/a>16 contained 2,000 Kalashnikov-style rifles \u201ccharacteristic of Iranian manufacture.\u201d
\nUnder the international sanctions regime, Iran is prohibited from exporting arms, a ban that Tehran has flagrantly flouted in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Meanwhile, Iranian shipments to Bahraini terrorists continue to be intercepted. Kevin Donegan, commander of the US Navy\u2019s Fifth Fleet, acknowledged that recent seizures were part of a much larger effort by Iran to move weapons to the Houthis.
\nIntelligence experts also raised concerns about the exploitation of the porous Yemen-Oman border for smuggling weapons. A US official told Reuters: \u201cWe are aware of a recent increased frequency of weapons shipments supplied by Iran, which are reaching the Houthis via the Omani border.\u201d
\nRather than denying such allegations, senior Iranians have bragged about them. A senior Iranian diplomat confirmed there had been a \u201csharp surge in Iran\u2019s help to the Houthis in Yemen\u201d since May 2016, including weapons, training and money. He told Reuters the objective was to escalate conflict with Saudi Arabia: \u201cThe nuclear deal gave Iran an upper hand in its rivalry with Saudi Arabia, but it needs to be preserved.\u201d
\nSupreme Leader Ali Khamenei\u2019s closest confidants have been similarly vocal. MP Alireza Zakani in 2015 bragged that Sanaa would be the \u201cfourth Arab capital\u201d to fall into Iran\u2019s hands after Beirut, Damascus and Baghdad. Zakani predicted that the \u201cYemen revolution\u201d would extend into Saudi Arabia. Ali Akbar Velayati called for the Houthis to play \u201cthe same role in Yemen\u201d as Hezbollah in Lebanon.
\nEarlier this month, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Hussain Salami declared: \u201cIt is now time for the Islamic conquests. After the liberation of Aleppo, Bahrain\u2019s hopes will be realized and Yemen will be happy with the defeat of the enemies of Islam.\u201d
\nUntil very recently, the Houthis were a minority group in the far northwest of Yemen with around 2,000 fighters, only capable of stirring up localized bouts of unrest. During the 2011 disturbances, Hezbollah\u2019s Unit 3800 with support from Iran\u2019s Al-Quds Force channeled funds and training to Houthi insurgents. The head of Unit 3800, Haj Khalil Harb, was later designated for US sanctions for his role in training and arming the Houthis.
\nUS National Intelligence Director James Clapper said in 2014: \u201cIran will continue to provide arms and other aid to Palestinian groups, rebels in Yemen, and Shiite militants in Bahrain to expand Iranian influence and to counter perceived foreign threats.\u201d
\nIran and its allies have declared that when fighting finishes in Mosul, Iraqi and Syrian proxy militias will be reconfigured as a regional \u201cexpeditionary force.\u201d The Washington Times reported: \u201cIran has positioned thousands of loyal Iraqi Shiite militia fighters around Mosul with a strategic goal of creating long-lasting armies inside Iraq that can also deploy as an expeditionary force to Syria, Yemen and other contested regions.\u201d
\nSenior Iranian military figures confirmed that they already had assets on the ground and intended to increase their presence in Yemen. In August 2016, IRGC Brig. Gen. Mohammed Ali Falaki told hard-line Iranian media sources that Iran was working toward \u201cthe formation of a Shiite liberation army whose commander is Qassem Soleimani\u2026 One front of this army is in Syria, the other in Iraq, and another in Yemen.\u201d
\nFaliki is a senior figure in the Syria-based Fatimiyoun Brigades, a mainly Afghan militia of 8,000-12,000 fighters recruited by Iran. After such proxies played a leading role in brutally subduing east Aleppo, there has been increasing discussion of these assets being redeployed elsewhere.
\nWhile Iran looks to pivot troops away from Syria, it remains involved in a massive feat of social engineering, relocating thousands of Shiites to western Syria to fundamentally alter the demographic balance in the region between Damascus and the Lebanese border.
\nAn exclusive report by The Guardian illustrated how far-reaching these measures are, with one source saying: \u201cFull sectarian segregation is at the heart of the Iranian project in Syria. They are looking for geographical zones that they can fully dominate and influence.\u201d
\nThese measures resemble similar strategies pursued by Iranian proxies in mixed areas of Iraq, where tens of thousands have been terrorized into exile and prevented from returning to their homes, in a transparent effort to alter the sectarian balance ahead of crucial provincial elections over the coming months.
\nIt took Israel decades for its settlements project to divide the West Bank into ungovernable cantons. These Iranian-engineered population shifts are happening before our eyes. Tehran must not be given carte blanche to do the same in Yemen, which is already facing a humanitarian catastrophe.
\nIran\u2019s self-proclaimed role in \u201cliberating\u201d Yemen is being ignored in the West. The smuggling of eye-watering quantities of heavy Iranian weaponry into Yemen passes without comment. Meanwhile, the media and human rights groups have taken every opportunity to give intense coverage of allegations of humanitarian suffering resulting from actions by the Saudi-led coalition.
\nThe Kingdom is the primary source of humanitarian aid to Yemen, supplying hundreds of tons of food and emergency supplies, and billions of riyals of financial support. Yet specious Houthi allegations that the coalition has blocked aid are what the media has tended to focus on.
\nIn the case of Bahrain and Yemen, Iran-funded \u201copposition\u201d entities have been waging an intense media campaign, vilifying Gulf leaderships and inciting human rights organizations against Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
\nDozens of Iranian and Hezbollah media channels have waged campaigns of hate speech and incitement to violence across the region. There is a need for systematic efforts to counter these dangerous lies and propaganda that are fueling and perpetuating civil conflicts.
\nWarehouses full of impounded Iranian weapons are testimony to the massive scale of Tehran\u2019s interference in Yemen. Iranian military and political leaders have made it crystal clear that they intend to escalate their involvement by putting militia boots on the ground and making local proxies increasingly dependent on their support \u2014 exactly as Iran has done very successfully in Syria.
\nYemen\u2019s central position on the world\u2019s shipping routes, and its position as the gateway between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, give this nation tremendous strategic importance. In light of Iran\u2019s dominant position across a huge swathe of territory stretching through Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean, allowing Iran to consolidate a foothold in Yemen would have catastrophic consequences for the region\u2019s geopolitical balance of power.
\nIranians are sick of their hard-line leadership, which is wasting billions exporting revolution overseas, leaving the nation impoverished. A Zogby poll shows how Iranian support for involvement in Syria plunged from 90 percent to 24 percent in just two years. Iranians want less ideology, theology and foreign meddling, and a regime that prioritizes their aspirations.
\nHowever, the figures being pushed by entities such as the IRGC to replace the ailing supreme leader \u2014 such as Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, Sadeq Larijani and Mohammed Taqi Mesbah Yazdi \u2014 are even more hard-line and fanatical than Khamenei.
\nWe have spent too long covering our eyes and ears and pretending that Iran\u2019s involvement in Yemen and elsewhere is exaggerated and insignificant. The facts speak for themselves. Pessimists would say it is too late to roll back Iranian hegemony in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. However, there remains a narrow window of opportunity for Yemen.
\nThe international community must compel Iran to recognize that there are consequences to its far-reaching meddling in Arab states. When ordinary Iranians and the outside world speak with one voice, pouring billions of dollars into policies of regime-change, meddling and proxy war may eventually become suicidal for this regime.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Baria Alamuddin<\/strong><\/span>
\nBaria Alamuddin is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster in the Middle East and the UK. She is editor of the Media Services Syndicate, a foreign editor at Al-Hayat, and has interviewed numerous heads of state.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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