launched<\/a> a handful of attacks on Israel, they did not target Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally. But tensions between the Houthis and Yemen\u2019s Saudi-backed government started to spike after an Iranian plane landed in Sana\u2019s airport on July 3 ahead of funeral proceedings in Iran for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the slain supreme leader.<\/p>\nAt the time, Mr. Saree, the Houthi military spokesman, said that Saudi fighter jets had entered Yemen and tried to prevent the plane from landing. He said that the Iranian aircraft was a civilian plane that was bringing Yemeni medical patients home from Tehran, and that when it took off again, it was carrying a large Houthi delegation to Tehran to participate in the state funeral.<\/p>\n
It was not immediately clear why Saudi Arabia might have objected to the Iranian plane landing in Sana. But Iran in the past has supplied the Houthis with weaponry and military training.<\/p>\n
The Saudi-led military coalition has for years enforced a punishing blockade over Yemeni airspace, and flights to and from Yemen remain restricted.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, Mr. Saree warned Saudi Arabia that any violation of Yemeni airspace could prompt a Houthi attack on Saudi airports and vital interests, and pledged that flights between Sana and Tehran would continue \u201cregardless of the consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then, on July 4, Yemen\u2019s government issued a statement saying that the \u201cIranian regime\u2019s operation of a direct flight\u201d to Sana had been \u201ca flagrant violation\u201d of Yemen\u2019s sovereignty.<\/p>\n
The same day, a Saudi-led military coalition said that the Houthi militia\u2019s allegations were \u201cnothing but an attempt to divert attention from its grave violations against the brotherly Yemeni people.\u201d The coalition did not mention the Iranian plane, but said that it would respond harshly to any attempts to violate Yemen\u2019s sovereignty.<\/p>\n
Those tensions came to a head on Monday with the attack on Sana airport.<\/p>\n
Yemen\u2019s Saudi-backed government claimed the attack, saying that it had carried it out in order to prevent another Iranian plane from landing there. However the Yemeni government does not have a functional air force, and relies heavily on military support from Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
Mr. Saree squarely blamed Saudi Arabia for the attack, and warned in a statement that it signified the end of a \u201cde-escalation phase\u201d between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s state broadcaster later said that an Iranian aircraft had successfully landed in Yemen\u2019s Hodeidah airport, near the Red Sea, without providing details.<\/p>\n
Yemen\u2019s grinding civil war began in 2014, when the Houthis swept into Sana and ousted the country\u2019s internationally recognized government, forcing its officials to flee to the southern city of Aden. The next year, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates began a bombing campaign in an attempt to restore the government.<\/p>\n
That campaign failed to displace the Houthis, and Saudi Arabia eventually pulled back from Yemen. The Houthis have since cemented their control of the country\u2019s north, effectively dividing Yemen into two states.<\/p>\n
While the internationally recognized government is nominally based in Aden, many of its most senior officials are actually based in Saudi Arabia, and they depend on the kingdom, both financially and politically. Yemen, a deeply impoverished country, is mired in one of the world\u2019s worst humanitarian crises, which was exacerbated by the fighting.<\/p>\n
In recent days, ground clashes have broken out between the Yemeni government and Houthi forces in the province of Hodeidah, threatening to reignite the war.<\/p>\n
Mohammed Abdulsalam, a Houthi spokesman, on Monday called the attack on Sana\u2019s airport \u201ca major breach of the 2022 truce.\u201d He accused Saudi Arabia in a statement of delaying and rejecting solutions to resume operations at the airport, which had been halted for much of the war under a blockade by the Saudi-led coalition.<\/p>\n
Mr. Grundberg, the U.N. envoy, said his priority was to prevent any further deterioration at this sensitive moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny step that risks widening the confrontation would only deepen Yemen\u2019s suffering and undermine the calm that Yemenis urgently need preserved,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Saeed Al-Batati contributed reporting from al-Mukalla, Yemen, and Ismaeel Naar from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A four-year truce between Saudi Arabia and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen was in peril on Monday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[9937,6238,8,4689,19,13080,37,246,9,2001,12566,39,282,7,1071,451,3745,6237],"class_list":["post-52439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-top-stories","tag-defense-and-military-forces","tag-donald-j","tag-headlines","tag-international-relations","tag-iran","tag-islamic-revolutionary-guards-corps","tag-israel","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-oman","tag-peace-process","tag-persian-gulf","tag-strait-of-hormuz","tag-top-stories","tag-trump","tag-united-arab-emirates","tag-united-states-defense-and-military-forces","tag-united-states-international-relations"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116918774969337096","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}