The Saudi Blockade

Is there a blockade around Yemen?  Who is blockading whom?  Where will it lead?

Helene Cooper of the New York Times says the administration is claiming credit for turning back a flotilla of Iranian ships which may have been carrying arms for Tehran-backed rebels. “Pentagon officials on Friday credited the deployment of an American aircraft carrier group in waters off the coast of Yemen for a decision by Iran to turn back a naval convoy suspected of carrying weapons bound for Shiite rebels.”  From this one might get the impression it is the Obama administration that is preventing the Iranians from using the sea to resupply its allies.

But a closer reading of the story suggests that USN’s true purpose was to keep the Iranians from challenging the Saudi blockade, which was already in place.  “Although it was unusual to dispatch such a large American naval force to the Arabian Sea on an interdiction and deterrence mission, Pentagon officials said the deployment — and Iran’s apparent response — had lowered tensions in the continuing regional proxy war between Tehran and Saudi Arabia.”

Far from delivering an ultimatum to the Iranians,  the administration claims it never even tried to communicate with the Iranian flotilla.

Defense Department officials said there were no communications between the American and Iranian ships, and they could not say what type of cargo was being transported, although an arms shipment was suspected.

It was unclear whether the United States would have tried to board or stop the Iranian convoy if it had continued toward Yemen; such a move would have risked escalating the conflict in Yemen, and could have stymied fragile negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear program.

The Saudis themselves have claimed responsibility for blockading Yemen’s ports. But perhaps “blockade” is not entirely the right word for the situation.  The Saudis are hanging onto the ports, defending against a Houthi advance from the interior.

The Saudi-led coalition that’s fighting against Shiite rebels in Yemen said it completed a blockade of the country’s ports and is ready to step up airstrikes. Bombing missions are seeking to stop the Shiite Houthis from moving forces between Yemen’s cities, Ahmed Asseri, a Saudi military officer, told reporters in Riyadh on Monday. Coalition aircraft and warships targeted the rebels as they advanced toward Aden, the southern port that’s the last stronghold of Saudi Arabia’s ally in Yemen, President Abdurabuh Mansur Hadi. Shipping routes to and from the ports are under the coalition’s control, Asseri said.

The Wall Street Journal emphasized this, saying “Saudi officials warned Iran that its sailors would try to search any ship that tried to dock in Yemen.” The American concerns were not quite coincident with the Saudis. While the Saudis were probably trying to prevent the Houthis from being resupplied, the principal American concern was that the Iranian ships were loaded with threats to ‘navigation’, that is to say, anti-ship weapons.

“What we’ve said to them is that if there are weapons delivered to factions within Yemen that could threaten navigation, that’s a problem,” Mr. Obama said on MSNBC this week. “And we’re not sending them obscure messages. We send them very direct messages about it.”

‘Threats to navigation’ is probably a code word for anti-ship missiles and mines that could be deployed in the Bab-el-Mandeb, “a strait located between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula, and Djibouti and Eritrea in the Horn of Africa. It connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.” The strait is exceedingly narrow and vulnerable to interdiction.

The Bab-el-Mandeb acts as a strategic link between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. In 2006, an estimated 3.3 million barrels (520,000 m3) of oil passed through the strait per day, out of a world total of about 43 million barrels per day (6,800,000 m3/d) moved by tankers.

The distance across is about 20 miles (30 km) from Ras Menheli in Yemen to Ras Siyyan in Djibouti. The island of Perim divides the strait into two channels, of which the eastern, known as the Bab Iskender (Alexander’s Strait), is 2 miles (3 km) wide and 16 fathoms (30 m) deep, while the western, or Dact-el-Mayun, has a width of about 16 miles (25 km) and a depth of 170 fathoms (310 m). Near the coast of Djibouti lies a group of smaller islands known as the “Seven Brothers”.

While Washington wants credit for turning back the Iranians, one of the things the administration does not want to take responsibility for is starving Yemen. Yet that is also an outcome of the Saudi control of the ports. An editorial from the same New York Times, places the blame for a blockade squarely on Saudi Arabia. “Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in Yemen’s civil war was always a risky gamble. Now there’s evidence showing just how damaging four weeks of airstrikes have been: more than 1,000 civilians killed, more than 4,000 wounded, and 150,000 displaced. Meanwhile, the fighting and a Saudi-led blockade have deprived Yemenis of food, fuel, water and medicines, causing what a Red Cross official called a humanitarian catastrophe. Yemen has long been a weak state, and with each day it draws closer to collapse.”

The editorial carefully tries to credit the administration with the good part while exculpating them from the bad part of the blockade. “The Obama administration has helped the Saudis with intelligence and tactical advice and by deploying warships off the Yemeni coast. Now it is wisely urging them to end the bombing. The White House seems to have realized that the Saudis appear to have no credible strategy for achieving their political goals, or even managing their intervention.”

The fundamental bluntness of Saudi military tools raise doubts over whether it can implement a selective blockade, similar to the complex regime of sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council on Saddam Hussein, which would call for an expensive and intelligent regime of inspections which would let pure “humanitarian” aid through while blocking supplies of military use.  But in Yemen, food itself will ultimately be a military commodity.  An intelligent blockade of Yemen would resemble a giant Blockade of the Gaza Strip.  It is doubtful the Saudis could ever manage this.  They cannot even find a way to selectively evacuate American citizens in Yemen.

The problem now facing the administration is two-fold. The first is how to keep the Saudis from starving their enemies. The second is how to keep the Saudis from losing the war from incompetence, which would lead to instability in Bab-el-Mandeb. It appears to be trying to square the circle by attempting to de-escalate the conflict between the two Islamic powers. Eric Schmitt and Michael Gordon of the NY Times describe the horns of the dilemma on which Obama is impaled.

WASHINGTON — Saudi Arabia’s resumption of airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen on Wednesday, only hours after it abruptly declared a halt to most military operations, reflected the difficulty of finding a political solution to the crisis. It also showed the challenges facing the Obama administration as it increasingly relies on allies in the Middle East.

Senior Saudi officials made clear on Wednesday that they had not formally declared an end to bombing. Rather, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, said the campaign was shifting to a new phase — one in which Saudi airstrikes would be more limited and come only in response to Houthi attacks, such as the assault against Yemeni troops in Taiz….

The ambassador did not mention the intensifying international pressure, including from the Obama administration, to stop airstrikes that medical and relief organizations said were killing hundreds of civilians, and to lift an embargo on food, fuel, water and medicines that was contributing to a growing humanitarian catastrophe. …

For an array of senior American officials engaged with senior Saudi officials in recent days — including Secretary of State John Kerry and John O. Brennan, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency — the challenge has been advising a crucial Middle East ally on how to carry out a complex military campaign whose results were starting to undercut larger political goals.

For now, the answer the Saudis have come up with is to recast the air campaign by putting the blame on the Houthis for provoking any further airstrikes and delaying a deal to end the fighting.

To ease the humanitarian crisis, the administration is trying to persuade the Kingdom to adopt the American stop-and-go way of war, to adopt a course which leads to that most desirable of diplomatic outcomes, a perpetual stalemate. Unless the Saudis adopt at least the trappings of politically correctness, the administration will come under pressure to abandon it. Yet without the backing of the administration, the Saudis may not survive. Under these circumstances, the “blockade” will become a two edged sword; what cuts at the Houthi supply line also strikes at the Kingdom’s political jugular.

Iran’s failed convoy may have won an indirect victory by allowing Tehran to portray Washington as complicit in the Saudi strangulation of supplies. That is ironic, since many Sunnis have long believed the administration was in the Shi’ite camp. By being on everyone’s side the adminisration may succeed in being hated by everyone in the end.  The problem with leading from behind is that everybody gets to f**t in your face.

The Western goal in both Yemen and Syria is to avoid a battlefield decision in favor of a negotiated settlement. The administration’s goal is therefore to prevent any side from winning. The Saudi blockade is testing the limits of that concept by making Washington choose between precipitating a humanitarian crisis or allowing the Kingdom’s enemies to resupply. Having closed the port of victory to itself the Obama administration has condemned its policy to the fate of the Flying Dutchman, doomed to wander the seas of foreign policy forever without ever finding harbor.

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