Zero Hedge — Houthis Say It's Not Over - Saudi Oil "Still Within Range"; Iraq Denies Its Territory Used

While US officials were quick out of the gate to allege an Iranian attack on Saudi Aramco facilities launched from Iraq early Saturday, a theory which the WSJ said was focus of an ongoing US-Saudi investigation, Iraq's government issued a firm denial on Sunday, which followed Iran's own denial that condemned Washington's "maximum lies"....

But crucially the Houthis have defiantly announced it's not over: "The rebel group said its weapons could reach anywhere in Saudi Arabia. Saturday’s strikes were carried out by aircraft equipped with a new type of engine, the Houthi rebel group said," Bloomberg reports.

Whatever the source this is not only a catastrophe for the Saudi leadership that began a war of choice with Yemen, but also the US military-industrial complex whose best weapons acquired in volume still could not counter an asymmetrical attack that cost very little in terms of criteria militaries use to measure investment and return.

Zero Hedge
Houthis Say It's Not Over - Saudi Oil "Still Within Range"; Iraq Denies Its Territory Used
Tyler Durden

See also

Moon of Alabama
Damage At Saudi Oil Plant Points To Well Targeted Swarm Attack

My own view: This is a shot across the bow.

Rebecca Gordon — In Yemen, Yet Another Undeclared U.S. War

On how many countries is U.S. ordnance falling at the moment? Some put the total at six; others, seven. For the record, those seven would be Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and, oh yes, Yemen.

The United States has been directing drone strikes against what it calls al-Qaeda targets in Yemen since 2002, but our military involvement in that country increased dramatically in 2015 when U.S. ally Saudi Arabia inserted itself into a civil war there. Since then, the United States has been supplying intelligence and mid-air refueling for Saudi bombers (many of them American-made F-15s sold to that country). The State Department has also approved sales to the Saudis of $1.29 billion worth of bombs — “smart” and otherwise — together with $1.15 billion worth of tanks, and half a billion dollars of ammunition. And that, in total, is only a small part of the $115 billion total in military sales the United States has offered Saudi Arabia since President Obama took power in 2009.

Why are American bombs being dropped on Yemen by American-trained pilots from American-made planes?….

The Saudi-led coalition includes Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain. Between March 2015 and the end of August 2016, according to the Yemen Data Project, an independent, nonpartisan group of academics and human rights organizations, the coalition launched more than 8,600 air strikes. At least a third of them struck civilian targets, including, the Guardian reports, “school buildings, hospitals, markets, mosques and economic infrastructure.”…

Why is Saudi Arabia, along with its allies, aided by the United States and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom, fighting in Yemen?…

So, once again, why do the Saudis (and their Sunni Gulf State allies) care so much about the roiling internal politics and conflicts of their desperately poor neighbor to the south? It’s true that the Houthis have managed to lob some rockets into Saudi Arabia and conduct a few cross-border raids, but they hardly represent an existential threat to that country.
The Saudis firmly believe, however, that Iran represents such a threat. As Saudi diplomatic documents described in the New York Times suggest, that country has “a near obsession with Iran.” They see the hand of that Shi’a nation everywhere, and certainly everywhere that Shi’a minorities have challenged Sunni or secular rulers, including Iraq.

There seems to be little evidence that Iran supported the Houthis (who represent a minority variant of Shi’a Islam) in any serious way — at least until the Saudis got into the act. Even now, according to a report in the Washington Post, the Houthis “are not Iranian puppets.” Their fight is local and the support they get from Iran remains “limited and far from sufficient to make more than a marginal difference to the balance of forces in Yemen, a country awash with weapons. There is therefore no supporting evidence to the claim that Iran has bought itself any significant measure of influence over Houthi decision-making.”

So to return to where we began: why exactly has Washington supported the Saudi war in Yemen so fully and with such clout? The best guess is that it’s a make-up present to Saudi Arabia, a gesture to help heal the rift that opened when the Obama administration concluded its July 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran. Under that agreement’s terms, Iran vowed “that it will under no circumstances ever seek, develop, or acquire any nuclear weapons” in return for the United States lifting years of economic sanctions.

The US has no direct national interest in Yemen.

Lobe Log
In Yemen, Yet Another Undeclared U.S. War

Rebecca Gordon

Saudi Propaganda

More propaganda.

The Saudis are claiming that the Houthis were targeting the Kaaba, after the Saudis experienced global outrage over targeting Houthi civilians.

Why would the Houthis target Mecca? To scare fellow Muslims from undertaking the hajj? In order to reduce Saudi income from pilgrims? It makes absolutely no zero sense.

Why would the Saudi accuse the Houthis of targeting Mecca. Makes all the sense in the world as propaganda.

And remember that recently the Houthis were accused of targeting a US ship. The US struck the Houthis in retaliation. Later the US admitted that it had no firm evidence of the attack, and the incident may been the result of a US Navy mistake. This was after the outrage at the Saudis target civilians was also directed at the US for arming them and doing just about everything else but pull the trigger.

Eurasia Review

Saudi Arabia: Global Outrage Over Houthi Missile Attack Targeting Mecca
Arab News

The Houthi reply.

The Yemeni Houthi army's spokesman on Friday denied Saudi allegation of targeting the holy city of Mecca with a ballistic missile, noting that it targeted a Saudi airport in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, in a statement carried by Houthi-controlled state Saba News Agency.

Brigadier General Sharaf Luqman said that Thursday's ballistic missile attack "has hit the target" with 100 percent accuracy, stressing that the target was inside the King Abdel Aziz Airport in Jeddah, west of Mecca.

He slammed the allegation as "a media war and misleading of public opinion," affirming that his army fighters are "very careful to spare civilian areas, particularly the Islamic holy sites, from any attack."

Saudi state news agency SPA reported Thursday that a ballistic missile launched by the Houthis from Yemeni northern province of Saada was intercepted 65 km from Mecca.

Xinhuanet

Yemen's Houthis deny targeting Mecca with missile

Does anyone else find it curious that America's enemies reported to be constantly targeting civilians intentionally, while when America or its allies are caught hitting civilians, it is always a mistake.

Paul R. Pillar — US Escalates War Role in Yemen

Backgrounder on doing more stupid stuff. 

Pillar argues that the US has no national interest in Yemen. In spite of this US policy there is being driven by the Saudis, and the US is supplying the KSA with weapons and intelligence.

The US and its Western allies have a simplistic view of the Middle East, whereas the dynamics are driven by local and regional interests that have nothing to do with US interests. The US interests in the Middle East are energy and Israel. Anything not directly related to those interests involve embroiling the US in unnecessary conflicts of choice.

Consortium News
US Escalates War Role in Yemen

Paul R. Pillar, former CIA veteran analyst

Daniel Lazare — The Collision Course in Syria

After Bush's folly in Iraq, Obama's folly in Syria and it far from over yet in both Iraq and Syria with both the future costs on all sides and the ultimate outcome uncertain.

A quarter of a million people would eventually die as a consequence of Obama’s miscalculation, 7.6 million would be displaced, and another four million would be driven abroad, all this in a country of just 22 million prior to the onset of civil war.

To put this in perspective, it is as if 3.6 million Americans had died as a result of a foreign-financed civil war, 110 million had been driven out of their homes, and another 58 million had been forced to flee abroad to Canada, Mexico or whatever other country would take them, where they would have no choice but to beg or perhaps sell ballpoint pens to passers-by in hopes of scratching out a living.

Instead of democracy, the U.S.-led push to overthrow Assad put Syria on the path to catastrophe. Obama could have hit the pause button at any point once it became clear where the effort was going.…

Daniel Lazare outlines how Obama got in bed with the devil.

Daniel Lazare catalogues how this is now spinning out of control.

Consortium News
The Collision Course in Syria
Daniel Lazare

See also

The “War on Terror” – now more than 14 years long – has trapped the U.S. and other nations in the “dark side” of human behavior, a dilemma that is both moral and practical because the continued use of brutal methods has only made the crisis worse, as Nicolas J S Davies explains.

In the Dark on the ‘Dark Side’
Nicolas J S Davies

Pepe Escobar — Bomb Iran? Not now: bomb Yemen

‘Operation Decisive Storm’ – the Pentagon-style House of Saud glorifying of its ghastly ‘Bomb Yemen’ show - could be summed up in a single paragraph.

The wealthiest Arab nation – the House of Saud petro-hacienda – supported by other GCC petro-rackets and also the wealthy “West”, has launched an – illegal – bombing/war/kinetic operation against the poorest Arab nation in the name of “democracy.”

And this absurdity is just the beginning.....

RT
Bomb Iran? Not now: bomb Yemen
Pepe Escobar

Bill Van Auken — Obama’s criminal war against Yemen

WSWS is a Trotskyite site so the rhetoric is heavy by the facts and analysis worth taking into account for an alternative to the official US position. Yemen is now a pawn in the proxy war between the US and its Israeli and Sunni allies in MENA and Shiites whom the US views as Iran and its allies in the region. The Houthis of Yemen are Shiites.

WSWS
Obama’s criminal war against Yemen
Bill Van Auken
ht Bob in the comments

Caleb Maupin — Revolutionary Yemen Faces Wall Street-Saudi Attack

What's really happening in Yemen. It's more complicated than the US media is reporting according to Maupin — part of Arab Spring and related to Occupy. Before getting into the situation in Yemen, first, he reviews Saudi Arabi as a key US ally.

While he US talks a good game of supporting democracy, the reality is that US foreign policy is based on geopolicy and geostrategy that is grounded in controlling territory, sea lanes, airspace, and vital resources like energy, which are considered essential to "national security" and "national interests." Why else would the US be supporting repressive, authoritarian and totalitarian Saudi Arabia? It's certainly not to support democracy.

New Eastern Outlook
Revolutionary Yemen Faces Wall Street-Saudi Attack

Caleb Maupin, a political analyst and activist based in New York; studied political science at Baldwin-Wallace College and was inspired and involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

Robert Parry — Deciphering the Mideast Chaos

Few Americans seem to comprehend what is unfolding in the Middle East – with the latest conflict involving Saudi airstrikes against the Houthi rebels who now control Yemen’s capital of Sanaa. In this swirl of regional wars, it’s often not clear where the U.S. government stands and how American interests are affected.

The reason for the confusion is simple: Many key pundits who get to explain what’s going on from the op-ed pages of the major U.S. newspapers and from the TV talk shows prefer that the American people don’t fully grasp what’s happening. Otherwise, the people might realize the dangers ahead and demand substantial changes in U.S. government policies....

... over the years, the U.S. government has exploited the general lack of knowledge among Americans about the intricacies of Middle East religions and politics by funneling the anger against one group to rationalize actions against another....

In seeking to smash this “Shiite crescent” [from Tehran through Baghdad and Damascus to Beirut], these Sunni-ruled states have been joined by Israel, which has taken the position that Iran and its Shiite allies are more dangerous than the Sunni extremists, thus transforming Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State into the “lesser evils.”

This was the subtext of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress on March 3 – that the U.S. government should shift its focus from fighting Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State to fighting Iran....

In one of the most explicit expressions of Israel’s views, its Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, then a close adviser to Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem Post in September 2013 that Israel favored the Sunni extremists over Assad.

“The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc,” Oren told the Jerusalem Post in an interview. “We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.” He said this was the case even if the “bad guys” were affiliated with Al-Qaeda.

 And, if you might have thought that Oren had misspoken, he reiterated his position in June 2014 at an Aspen Institute conference. Then, speaking as a former ambassador, Oren said Israel would even prefer a victory by the Islamic State, which was massacring captured Iraqi soldiers and beheading Westerners, than the continuation of the Iranian-backed Assad in Syria.

“From Israel’s perspective, if there’s got to be an evil that’s got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail,” Oren said....

Over the past decade, the Israelis and the Saudis have built a powerful alliance, a relationship that has operated mostly behind the curtains. They combined their assets to create what amounted to a new superpower in the Middle East, one that could project its power mostly via the manipulation of U.S. policymakers and opinion leaders – and thus deployment of the U.S. military. 

Israel possesses extraordinary political and media influence inside the United States – and Saudi Arabia wields its oil and financial resources to keep American officialdom in line. Together, the Israeli-Saudi bloc now controls virtually the entire Republican Party, which holds majorities in both chambers of Congress, and dominates most mainstream Democrats as well.

Reflecting the interests of the Israeli-Saudi bloc, American neocons have advocated U.S. bombing against both the Syrian and Iranian governments in pursuit of “regime change” in those two countries. [emphasis added],,,,,

Parry views this as an existential crisis for the United States and neither the background nor the details are being revealed to the American public — as the New York Times calls for war with Iran (see below).

Consortium News
Deciphering the Mideast Chaos
Robert Parry

Also

Just as the New York Times promoted fake facts to rationalize invading Iraq, it has just published a deceptive op-ed to justify bombing Iran, the ranting of one of America’s most notorious warmongers, John Bolton, as Lawrence Davidson describes.

Letting A Warmonger Rant
Lawrence Davidson is a history professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania.