Saudi Arabia building up military near Yemen border - U.S. officials

[inanna]

Source: Reuters

Tue Mar 24, 2015 7:49pm EDT

(Reuters) - Saudi Arabia is moving heavy military equipment including artillery to areas near its border with Yemen, U.S. officials said on Tuesday, raising the risk that the Middle East’s top oil power will be drawn into the worsening Yemeni conflict.

The buildup follows a southward advance by Iranian-backed Houthi Shi'ite militants who took control of the capital Sanaa in September and seized the central city of Taiz at the weekend as they move closer to the new southern base of U.S.-supported President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

The slide toward war in Yemen has made the country a crucial front in Saudi Arabia's region-wide rivalry with Iran, which Riyadh accuses of sowing sectarian strife through its support for the Houthis.

The conflict risks spiraling into a proxy war with Shi'ite Iran backing the Houthis, whose leaders adhere to the Zaydi sect of Shi'ite Islam, and Saudi Arabia and the other regional Sunni Muslim monarchies backing Hadi.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/24/us-yemen-security-usa-saudi-idUSKBN0MK2S120150324?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

[Mr.Bill]

1. I don't like to see any war,

but I hope we sit this one out and let the countries in the region sort things out for themselves.

[Comrade Grumpy]

3. It's not up to Saudi Arabia to sort out Yemen's issues.

[Mr.Bill]

4. That's up to the Saudis to decide.

In the mean time, it sounds like they are just making sure it doesn't cross over their border.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. Here is a key reason why Yemen is so important to USA and Saudis:

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait is a chokepoint between the Horn of Africa and the Middle East, and it is a strategic link between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean.
http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=18991
Iran has threatened at various times to sink a big ship in that strait, blocking it, so no oil can be carried thru.
ISIA would most certainly threaten the strait.

Geography and oil, and the supremacy of the petrodollar is what driving global decisions today.

[Fred Sanders]

5. When did Iran last threaten "to sink a big ship"...how would that block a 100 mile wide waterway?

And this route is relatively minor on the world scale, a fifth of the Strait of Hormuz.

http://www.eia.gov/countries/regions-topics2.cfm?fips=WOTC

[dixiegrrrrl]

12. I stand corrected, I was thinking of the Strait of Hormuz re: Iran.

which is much narrower than Bab..

[Fred Sanders]

13. So..when was the big ship sinking threat? I do not recall such a thing. Was it just after America killed

120 innocents on an Iranian commercial airliner?

Hormuz can not be blocked by one ship, afloat or sunk, either.

If you do not know, you do not know - this is not CNN, where 'not knowing' is the news.

[StoneCarver]

17. Lighten up Fred

She appologised! Grumpy, grumpy, grumpy. Show some respect for Dixiegirl. She's been here a long time and is very sharp.
Stonecarver

[Thor_MN]

9. In the short term, the US is almost out of space to store oil.

I would think that other countries should be much more concerned about this. Our storage is just about full, prices are dropping.

Absolutely no calls for building the strategic oil reserve. Guess W and the Dick were not quite the oil wizards they claimed. Either that or they were deliberately fucking over the country buy oil at peak prices. Wish the media would ask them about that decision.

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

15. Yemen also has a border with S.A. which must be of concern.

S.A. doesn't want these people crossing into S.A., for multiple good reasons.

[dixiegrrrrl]

16. True, that.

In fact, incursions are already happening.
But I do prefer Saudis defend their borders rather than us doing it for them.
Altho I figure we are already involved, more than is known.

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

18. 100% in agreement - let them defend themselves. I hear S.A. has very good weaponry!

[kelliekat44]

6. And the Saudis kill their own people. Shouldn't invade like we did Iraq? nt

[leveymg]

7. Yemen was a safe haven for ISIS but isn't now. That's what has KSA

all in a tizzy.

[Renew Deal]

8. A military buildup makes sense from the border control perspective

Dont know about an invasion.

[DeSwiss]

10. K&R

- 'Thank God for the Saudis': ISIS, Iraq, and the Lessons of Blowback

[freshwest]

11. Positioning for who will run the newest edition of the Califphate, all of it. SA has been the leader

in the region for over half a century. But they can't agree within their own nation who should determine policy.

They tell Kerry they can't do a thing - and I believe them on this - about the money being transferred to ISIS by ultra wealthy Saudis not high up or not within the house of Saud.

The money is within a different banking system than ours and it's impossible to shut it off, no matter what the royals there want. So the attack on all of Saudi Arabia is not realistic, no more than saying all in the USA agreed with going into Iraq.

I suspect this is why the West calls the House of Saud 'friend' because as radical and nasty as they've been, they are NOT the all out nihilists that ISIS is. And ISIS has told them and the world that they already have their cells in place to bring down the House of Saud and to destroy Mecca as the focal point of world Islam.

So the Saudis are well advised to isolate themselves from Yemen and its own chaos. It may be too late for them to maintain their country. And some very rich Saudis don't care about that, they are the prime example of version of Lennon's 'imagine there's no country' as they don't believe in nations. They want a planetary system that will be their version of God's Will.

I'm not sure what the House of Saud has ever done for the USA except allow them to be based there since the 1950s. Hopefully we'll soon be free of dependency on the Gulf oil states. Obama has taken the route to peace with alternative energy.

Some are trying desperately to avoid our own isolationism. While it's time for them to fight it out amongst each other, and they've been doing so with or without our help, the very real fear remains. That a truly united Arab world will not remain isolated, but expand past the Middle East. It has a global vision.

I see it as expanding. Their rate of population growth outstrips the West and they need more room. So they will get it peacefully or not. This is a fact of history. The natives of the Americas were overrun by Europeans who were experiencing a population boom. Their people came here and made another one.

Wherever people in the world go to get better living conditions, they change it as they create their own population boom where they moved to expand their opportunities. This is a large part of the war on women's rights worldwide. Women create the generations for the use of others and do most of the unpaid labor in this world, and cannot stop doing either if they survive.

The power of reproduction is a thing that empires have either fought by war or encourage by those who want their empire to expand by sheer numbers. It always works. And war is part of all sides without fully funded, functioning civil societies. Those will be harder to maintain in an era of climate instability.

The borders will change and things are going to get harder and holding onto or getting new land to support the population will cause conflicts and mass migrations.

This was laid out by the Pentagon in the 1970s, AFAIK what we've seen were authentic documentation. Those with the knowledge made their plans accordingly. For the rest, there's always propaganda to urge them to run out and be slaughtered at home or abroad in some way.

We share more in common with the 'animal kingdom' which leaders of several types have said we are not really part of for a long time. They expected better of us, but we have let this happen. So expect a mess.

[Colorado Vince]

14. Yemen President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi Flees Home As Rebels Close In

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/25/yemen-president-flees-abed-rabbo-mansour-hadi_n_6936912.html

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Yemen's embattled president fled his palace in the southern port city of Aden for an undisclosed location on Wednesday as Shiite rebels offered a bounty for his capture and arrested his defense minister. Hours later, the rebels launched airstrikes targeting presidential forces guarding the palace.

President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi left just hours after the rebels' own television station said they seized an air base where U.S. troops and Europeans advised the country in its fight against al-Qaida militants. That air base is only 60 kilometers (35 miles) away from Aden, where Hadi had established a temporary capital.

The advance of the Shiite rebels, empowered by the backing of the ousted Yemeni autocrat Ali Abdullah Saleh and his loyalists, threatens to plunge the Arab world's poorest country into a civil war that could draw in its Gulf neighbors. Already, Hadi has asked the United Nations to authorize a foreign military intervention in the country.

The takeover of Aden, the country's economic hub, would mark the collapse of what is left of Hadi's grip on power. It would also open a new chapter in the Houthi-Saleh alliance and possibly pave the way for more infighting.