By Karim Shami
Riyadh refused Washington’s pressure to increase oil production, then faced blistering attacks on its oil facilities and infrastructure from Yemen. Under increasing pressure to end its siege on Yemen, what will the Saudis do?
Overshadowed by events in Ukraine and elsewhere, the devastating war in Yemen is now in its seventh year. However, increasingly strategic attacks by the Yemeni resistance movement Ansarallah â combined with the oil production standoff between Washington and Riyadh â may bring Yemen into the spotlight again and highlight its bitter fight to lift the siege.
Besieged Yemen
From the start of the Saudi/UAE-led aggression against Yemen in March 2015, a strict land, air, and sea siege was imposed on the poorest country in West Asia. In the early stages of the war, the Yemeni resistance movement Ansarallah did not possess either the military experience or political acumen to counter the aerial aggression, and lost strategic areas from Marib in the east to Hodeidah in the west.
But within two years, Ansarallah became capable of not only repelling the Saudi-Emirati advances, but proactively counter attacking sites captured by the foreign coalition. After developing more sophisticated missile and drone capabilities, the Ansarallah-aligned military also began carrying out missile and drone operations across the border, deep into Saudi Arabia.
Perhaps the most prominent of these operations was the âBalance of Deterrenceâ operation, claimed by Ansarallah in 2019, which left Aramcoâs (Arabian-American Oil Company) tanks burning. The goal of that operation lay in its name: Balance of Deterrence, meaning deterring the aggression and the bombing of the capital city, Sanaa.
