Wednesday evening Adel Al-Jubeir, Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the United States announced that Saudi Arabia had commenced military operations against the Ansarullah fighters of the Houthi movement in Yemen. The Saudi intervention was not unexpected. Over the last few weeks there were signs that the U.S. and the Saudi’s were preparing the ground for direct military intervention in Yemen in response to the Houthi’s seizing state power in January.
The appearance of a previously unknown ISIS element that was supposedly responsible for the massive bomb attack that killed over 130 people on Friday and the withdraw of U.S. personnel on Saturday were the clear signals that direct intervention by the Saudi’s was imminent.
And this week with the fall of al-Anad military base, the base where the U.S. military and CIA conducted its drone warfare in Yemen, to Ansarullah fighters and the capture of the port city of Aden where disposed President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi had fled, it was almost certain that the U.S. would the green light for its client states to intervene.
The Saudi Ambassador cloaked the role of Saudi Arabia within the fictitious context of another grand coalition, this time led by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – the corrupt collection of authoritarian monarchies allied with the U.S. and the other Western colonial powers.
Ambassador Al-Jubeir announced that before launching operations in Yemen all of its allies were consulted. The meaning of that statement is that the U.S. was fully involved in the operation. Even though the Ambassador stressed that the U.S. was not directly involved in the military component of the assault, CNN reported that an interagency U.S. coordination team was in Saudi Arabia and that a U.S. official confirmed that the U.S. would be providing logistical and intelligence support for the operation.