Yemeni Boxing In the far corner of the ring, the Houthis, sons of the Zaydi Iranian Shiites — progeny of the north’s Kingdom of Yemen and the south’s Arab Republic. In the ring’s near corner, the two-thirds majority Sunnis — who want nothing to do with the Houthies, and who will cooperate even with Al Qaeda if necessary to destroy them. On Wednesday at a U.N. sponsored conference, the contending parties agreed to peace. However the Houthies did not live up to their first promise, which was to cease barricading the presidential palace and home, nor their second, which was to release hostage presidential information minister Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak. Accordingly, and being trapped, the president quit. Things are mostly coming to a head now in the province of Marib, a gateway to northern parts of the country. Houthis attacks there are meeting with heavy resistance from Sunni tribesmen, a sub-group of which, Islah, the Houthies recently eviscerated. Bottom line: On the one hand, Iran, with its tentacles extending to the Syrian rump government under Asad and to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestine, has now grabbed at least for the moment Yemen as well. On the other hand Iran’s seeming control over Iraq flopped. ISIS was born of Iraq’s tilt away from the Sunnis, and has now become a vicious counterweight to a safe Iraq, when it quickly destroyed the essentially Shiite army America had trained. Thus, haters of one another Iran and the U.S. are forced to partner to salvage Iraq. Its capacity to resurrect itself as a secular state is very much in doubt. Add to this that the U.S. and Iran are claiming to be close to an agreement on non-nuclear proliferation, while the Republicans in Congress seem equally dead set against it, and who knows? Kind of like watching the end of the Seahawks-Packers game, isn’t it.
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 22:39:31 +0000
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