Saudi Arabia carried out an airstrike on the southern Yemen port city of Mukalla early Tuesday, targeting what it described as weapons shipments bound for a separatist force backed by the United Arab Emirates that has moved to consolidate further control of southern Yemen in recent weeks.
The strike marked an unprecedented escalation of tensions between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, two Persian Gulf heavyweights that are ostensibly aligned in the fight against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen but whose goals in that war-torn country, and the wider region, have increasingly diverged.
Saudi Arabia “stresses that any threat to its national security is a red line, and the Kingdom will not hesitate to take all necessary steps and measures to confront any such threat,” its foreign ministry said in a statement Tuesday in a sharp, and remarkable, rebuke of its erstwhile ally.
Brig. Gen. Turki al-Malki, a spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition of forces backing Yemen’s internationally recognized government, said in comments Tuesday carried by the Saudi Press Agency that the strike was conducted after two ships arrived in Mukalla over the weekend without permits from the Emirati port of Fujairah.
He accused its crew members of unloading “a large quantity of weapons and armored vehicles” to support the separatist Southern Transitional Council in the eastern provinces of Hadramawt and Mahra. At the request of the president of the Saudi-backed government in Yemen, and “given the danger and escalation posed by these weapons, which threaten security and stability,” al-Malki added, “the Coalition Air Forces conducted a limited military operation this morning targeting weapons and combat vehicles unloaded from the two ships at the port of Al-Mukalla.”
Al-Malki said there was “no collateral damage” from the strike and there were no reports of any casualties. The Washington Post could not immediately verify his claim.
In a statement Tuesday, the UAE’s foreign ministry disputed the Saudi account of its role in Yemen and rejected claims that it had pressured “any Yemeni party to carry out military operations” that threaten Saudi Arabia or its borders.
The UAE’s statement expressed surprise at the targeting of military vehicles at Mukalla’s port and denied that its shipment to Yemen had contained weapons and said the vehicles within were not destined for “any Yemeni party” but rather for UAE forces in Yemen. The statement called for de-escalation and emphasized its support for Saudi security.
The Post could not independently verify either side’s claim about the contents and intended recipient of the Emirati shipments.
The escalation comes after STC forces swept across Hadramawt and Mahra earlier this month, driving out Saudi-backed forces in a relatively bloodless takeover of vast swaths of Yemen that border Saudi Arabia and Oman. The STC, established in 2017, is part of the Presidential Leadership Council, an uneasy alliance of political figures in southern Yemen that together form the executive body of the internationally recognized government.
Members of the council — and their Persian Gulf backers — share the aim of countering the Houthis, the Iran-backed rebel movement that took control of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in 2014, sparking a civil war. But Saudi Arabia supports a unified Yemen, while the Emirati-backed STC seeks to reestablish a separate state in southern Yemen that existed for about two decades before its dissolution in 1990. The Emirati government was rankled when Saudi Arabia excluded it from peace talks with the Houthis in recent years, analysts said.
The STC’s lightning offensive this month appeared to have caught Saudi Arabia by surprise, analysts said, and tensions continued to simmer in recent weeks as Saudi Arabia weighed its response.
Late last week, Saudi Arabia hit an area of Hadramawt where STC forces were attempting to advance, in what Saudi-aligned media described as a “warning airstrike.” On Saturday, al-Malki threatened the Saudi-led coalition that it would intervene unless the STC withdraws from the territory it seized and that “any military movements” to the contrary would be “dealt with directly and immediately,” without directly referring to Emirati support for the forces. Last-minute diplomacy in recent days to contain the crisis failed, Ahmed Nagi, a senior Yemen analyst for the International Crisis Group, said in a phone interview after meeting last week with Saudi and Yemeni officials in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.
The Saudi statement Tuesday, in which Riyadh directly accused the Emirati government of being behind the STC offensive, marked the most strongly worded warning to the UAE from the kingdom to date.
“The steps taken by the UAE are considered highly dangerous, inconsistent with the principles upon which the Coalition to Restore Legitimacy in Yemen was established, and do not serve the coalition’s purpose of achieving security and stability for Yemen,” it said, referring to the Saudi-led military coalition.
The Saudi foreign ministry on Tuesday endorsed a call from Yemen’s internationally recognized government for Emirati forces to leave the country within 24 hours, and it demanded the UAE “halt any military or financial support to any party within Yemen.”
President Rashid al-Alimi, the Riyadh-backed head of the internationally recognized government, canceled a joint defense agreement with the UAE, declared a 90-day state of emergency in Yemen and announced an air, sea and land embargo on all ports and border crossings for 72 hours. He called on all forces in Hadramawt and al-Mahra to withdraw and hand over their positions to a Saudi-backed force.
Amr al-Bidh, a senior STC official, did not respond to a request for comment.
Four members of the Presidential Leadership Council who are aligned with the STC condemned Alimi’s move to cancel the defense pact with the UAE. Hisham al-Jabri, chief of staff for one of them, Faraj Salmin al-Bahsani, told The Post in a text message there were “no signs of compromise until now” between UAE- and Saudi-backed factions, and that he expected the Saudi strike Tuesday to accelerate efforts by the STC to declare an independent state in southern Yemen.
The emerging rift between Saudi Arabia and the UAE could be more consequential for the region than the Qatar diplomatic crisis in 2017, when Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt cut off relations with the Qatari government and Saudi Arabia effectively blockaded Qatar, according to Farea al-Muslimi, a research fellow at Chatham House, a London-based think tank.
“They are countries that are powerful, they have weapons, they have no parliaments — there is no way to hold them accountable. And they have big egos,” he said in a phone interview. “Saudi Arabia and the UAE have never gone after each other like this in the past. This is very dangerous.”
While Saudi Arabia and the UAE “share a close strategic alignment with the U.S.,” said Adam Baron, future security fellow at New America, a D.C.-based think tank, “their own regional strategies have increasingly clashed with each other.”
“We’ve seen this in Yemen, Sudan, Somalia. We’ve seen this in the Red Sea, and now we’re seeing the — far from inevitable and, as of yet, still relatively limited — conflagration of these tensions,” he said in a phone interview.
Those differing regional strategies have publicly come to a head in multiple fronts in recent weeks, Baron said, pointing to recent developments in Sudan and Somalia. President Donald Trump said last month that Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman had requested that Washington work toward a solution to the conflict in Sudan where Riyadh and the UAE government back opposing militaries.
Israel’s formal recognition last week of Somaliland, a breakaway region that seceded from Somalia more than three decades ago, is also likely to have incentivized Riyadh to rebalance power dynamics, Baron said. The UAE maintains a military presence there and abstained from an Arab League statement condemning Israel’s move. The Houthis have since threatened to attack any Israeli presence on Somaliland.
Arab states — and the broader international community — are likely to take Saudi Arabia’s side in Yemen, al-Muslimi said.
An early sign of support came in the form of a statement from Ahmed Aboul Gheit, secretary general of the League of Arab States, on Tuesday, expressing “profound concern over the rapidly escalating and dangerous developments in the Republic of Yemen” about the STC’s “failure to respond” to the Saudi-backed government’s demands. Aboul Gheit appealed to member states to “uphold the spirit of Arab solidarity at this delicate juncture” and condemned “any military movements aimed at imposing a secessionist reality on the ground by force” — a reference to recent advances by the UAE-backed forces.
In Yemen, al-Muslimi said, the Houthis and Iran are probably watching with glee the demise of the coalition that has fought them for years. He said that as regional powers pursue their own aims, ordinary Yemenis will pay the price.
“Yemenis will continue to be caught in the middle of enemies — and even worse, of friends,” he said.
Parker reported from Dublin, and Cheeseman reported from Beirut. Suzan Haidamous in Beirut and Heba Farouk Mahfouz in Cairo contributed to this report.
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