Washington’s Two Air Wars: With Iran In Iraq, With Saudis (Against Iran) In Yemen
By Juan Cole
26 March, 2015
Initially,
the US sat out the Tikrit campaign north of the capital of Baghdad
because it was a largely Iran-directed operation. Only 3,000 of the
troops were regular Iraqi army. Some 30,000 members of the Shiite
militias in Iraq joined in– they are better fighters with more esprit de
corps than the Iraqi army. Some of them, like the Badr Corps of the
Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, have strong ties to Iran. The special
ops unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Jerusalem
Brigade, provided tactical and strategic advice, commanded by Qasem
Solaimani.
The
campaign deployed tanks and artillery against Daesh in Tikrit, but
those aren’t all that useful in counter-insurgency, because they cannot
do precise targeting and fighting is in back alleys and booby-trapped
buildings where infantry and militiamen are vulnerable.
The campaign stalled out. The Shiite militias didn’t want the US coming in, but have been overruled by al-Abadi. US
aircraft can precisely target Daesh units and pave the way for an Iraqi
advance against the minions of the notorious beheader “Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi” (the nom de guerre of Ibrahim al-Samarrai, who is
apparently wounded and holed up in Syria).
US
air intervention on behalf of the Jerusalem Brigades of the IRGC is
ironic in the extreme, since the two have been at daggers drawn for
decades. Likewise, militias like Muqtada al-Sadr’s “Peace Brigades”
(formerly Mahdi Army) and League of the Righteous (Asa’ib Ahl al-Haqq)
targeted US troops during Washington’s occupation of Iraq. But the fight
against the so-called “Islamic State group” or Daesh has made for very
strange bedfellows. Another irony is that apparently the US doesn’t mind
essentially tactically allying with Iran this way– the reluctance came
from the Shiite militias.
Not
only US planes but also those of Jordan and some Gulf Cooperation
Council countries (Saudi Arabia? the UAE? Qatar?) will join the bombing
of Daesh at Tikrit, since these are also afraid of radical, populist
political Islam. But why would they agree to be on the same side as
Iran? Actually, this air action is an announcement that Iraq needs the
US and the GCC, i.e. it is a political defeat for Iranian unilateralism.
The US and Saudi Arabia are pleased with their new moxie in Baghdad.
Then in Yemen, Saudi Arabia has begun bombing the positions of the Shiite Houthi movement that
has taken over northern and central Yemen and is marching south. One
target was an alleged Iranian-supplied missile launcher in Sanaa to
which Saudi Arabia felt vulnerable. That isn’t a huge surprise. The
Saudis have bombed before, though not in a while. The big surprise is
that they have put together an Arab League anti-Houthi coalition,
including Egypt, Jordan, Sudan, and the GCC. Even Pakistan has joined
in. (Sudan and Pakistan are a surprise, since they had tilted toward
Iran or at least had correct relations with it formerly). The US State
Department expressed support for this action and pledged US logistical
and military support. It remains to be seen if this coalition can
intervene effectively. Air power is unlikely to turn the tide against a
grassroots movement.
About
a third of Yemenis are Zaidi Shiites, a form of Shiism that
traditionally was closer to Sunni Islam than the more militant Iranian
Twelver or Imami branch of Shiism. But Saudi proselytizing and
strong-arming of Zaidis in the past few decades, attempting to convert
them to militant Sunnism of the Salafi variety (i.e. close to Wahhabism,
the intolerant state church of Saudi Arabia) produced the Houthi
reaction, throwing up a form of militant, populist Zaidism that adopted
elements of the Iranian ritual calendar and chants “Death to America.”
The Saudis alleged that the Houthis are Iranian proxies, but this is not
likely true. They are nativist Yemenis reacting against Saudi attempts
at inroads. On the other hand, that Iran politically supports the
Houthis and may provide them some arms, is likely true.
The
Houthis marched into the capital, Sanaa, in September, and conducted a
slow-motion coup against the Arab nationalist government of President
Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. He came to power in a referendum with 80%
support in February, 2012, after dictator Ali Abdallah Saleh had been
forced out by Yemen’s youth revolution of 2011-12. Hadi recently fled to
the southern city of Aden and tried to reconstitute the nationalist
government there, with support from 6 southern governors who, as Sunni
Shafi’is, rejected dictatorial Houthi Zaidi rule (no one elected the
Zaidis).
But
the Houthis, seeking to squelch a challenge from the south, moved south
themselves, taking the Sunni city of Taiz and attracting Sunni tribal
allies (Yemeni tribes tend to support the victor and sectarian
considerations are not always decisive). Then Houthi forces neared Aden
and Mansour Hadi is said to have fled. The nationalist government
appears to have collapsed.
The
other wrinkle is that elements of the old nationalist Yemen military
appear to be supporting the Houthis, possibly at the direction of
deposed president Ali Abdallah Saleh. So in a way all this is a reaction
against the youth revolution of 2011, which aimed at a more democratic
nationalist government.
The
US support for the Saudi air strikes and the new coalition makes the
Yemen war now the second major air campaign supported by the US in the
region. But the one in Iraq is in alliance with Iran. The one in
Yemen is against a group supported in some measure by Iran. This latter
consideration is probably not important to the US. Rather, the US is
afraid that Houthi-generated chaos will create a vacuum in which
al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula will gain a free hand. AQAP has
repeatedly targeted the US. The US also maintains that in each instance,
it is supporting the legitimate, elected government of the country.
A lot of the online press in Yemen appears to have been knocked offline by the turmoil, by the way.
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