WASHINGTON – Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have launched drone and missile attacks on Saudi Arabia over the past month, using increasingly sophisticated drones and missiles to hit targets across the kingdom’s territory, defense officials and experts say.
The Houthis alone launched more than 40 drones and missiles on Saudi Arabia in February, a senior U.S. defense official told NBC News.
“We are certainly aware of a disturbing increase in Houthi border attacks by various systems, including cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles),” the defense official said.
The attacks highlight the Houthi’s ability to hit distant targets in Saudi Arabia over hundreds of kilometers, including the center of the kingdom’s oil industry.
But unlike a devastating attack on drones and cruise missiles in September 2019 that knocked out two major oil plants, Saudi Arabia has managed to shoot down many of the incoming drones and missiles.
In their latest attack on Saudi Arabia on Sunday, Houthi forces said they had launched a medium-range Zulfiqar missile and ten armed drones at the eastern cities of Ras Tanura and Dammam, home to key oil facilities, and seven short-range Badr missiles and four drones at targets in the south.
Because of the growing threat from the air, the U.S. military assisted the Saudis and shared intelligence to help them locate and intercept explosive drones and a series of ballistic and cruise missiles, defense officials said.
Saudi Arabia said Sunday’s attacks did not cause any casualties or major damage to the country’s oil installations.
Although the Saudis have so far managed to destroy recent attacks, there have been close calls. On February 11, Houthi rockets hit Abha International Airport in southwestern Saudi Arabia, causing a fire on a civilian aircraft, although no one was injured.
Following the September 2019 attack that disrupted more than half of the kingdom’s oil production for days, the United States provided Patriot missile defense batteries to Saudi Arabia, as well as a terminal defense system (THAAD), to help Riyadh to repel the Houthi. threat.
However, the anti-missile systems are designed to detect and hit missiles entering at higher altitudes, and low-flying drones offer a more challenging target, especially when launched in higher numbers. According to defense officials and regional experts, the Saudi citizens used the F-15 fighter jets armed with missiles by the US.
The embassy in Saudi Arabia in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
Iranian weapons and advice
The scale and scope of the Houthi attacks illustrate how the rebels have progressed as a fighting force since the start of the Yemeni war in 2015, and how much they have benefited from Iranian weapons and advice, according to local analysts and UN experts.
A January UN report said there were growing indications that Iran was supplying weapons and weapons components to the Houthi rebels via smuggling routes at sea.
“An increasing amount of evidence indicates that individuals or entities in the Islamic Republic of Iran are supplying significant quantities of weapons and components to the Houthi,” the UN panel of experts said.
Previous UN reports have found that ballistic missiles fired by the Houthis were manufactured by Iran, and that drones used by the Houthis were almost identical in design and capability to those manufactured by Iran.
The Houthis are capable of using components offered by Iran, including drones, rocket engines and electronics, to manufacture missiles and drones at local plants, said Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah workers also backed the effort, he said.
“The Houthis with Iranian support and Lebanese Hezbollah support have managed to muster some amazing strike capabilities,” said Knights, whose research has focused on Iranian and Houthi military capabilities.
“They’ve brought their production to the level where they can release a lot more of these systems. They’ve reached technical maturity on their local production systems,” Knights said.
Iran has repeatedly denied arming the Houthi forces. Iran’s UN mission did not respond to a request for comment.
Iran is the only country that has recognized the Houthi forces as the government of Yemen, and its envoy for the rebels, Hassan Irloo, has been described by the Foreign Ministry as an officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.
The war in Yemen, which erupted in 2015, aligns the Shiite Houthis with Iran against a US-backed Saudi-led coalition of Sunni-Muslim states that wants the internationally recognized government to return to power. . The civil war also became a proxy conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
The Houthi airstrikes on Saudi Arabia were accompanied by a ground offensive in Yemen around Marib, the last northern stronghold of the internationally recognized Yemeni government. UN officials have warned that the fall of Marib could displace hundreds of thousands of Yemenis, exacerbating aid agencies’ escalation of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
The Houthi attack on Marib and missile salvos on Saudi Arabia coincide with a renewed international effort to try to mediate a peace deal, with a US envoy, Tim Lenderking, speaking in the region this week. Lenderking has spent extra time in the region bringing about a ceasefire and ‘although there is hopeful progress, more parties are devotedly needed’, the foreign ministry said on Thursday. According to Arab News, Lenderking said a sound ceasefire proposal had been submitted to the Houthi rebels.
The United States, along with France, Germany, Italy and Britain, on Thursday condemned the Houthi offensive on Marib and the “huge increase in attacks that the Houthis have carried out and demanded against Saudi Arabia”, the governments said in a statement on Thursday. .
The military pressure from the Houthis seems to be aimed at leveraging before possible peace talks, and exploiting friction between the Biden government and the Saudis, said Adel Abdel Ghafar, a fellow of the Brookings Doha Center brainstorming session. .
“The Houthis have been encouraged by the decision of the Biden government not to support the Saudi-led war against Yemen,” Ghafar said, trying to put himself “in a stronger position” once negotiations begin to end the war. “
President Joe Biden halted support for Saudi Arabia’s military campaign in Yemen shortly after taking office and his government lifted a terrorist designation on the Houthi rebels, saying it was delivering first aid to a hindering land at the point of famine. Democrats in Congress have been demanding for years to end U.S. support in the war led by Saudi Arabia, citing airstrikes using U.S. bombs that have caused heavy civilian casualties.
But critics have accused the Biden government of sending the wrong signal to the Houthis and that the rebels have little incentive to make concessions.
“The pressure on Riyadh, while essentially giving the Houthis a free pass, has created an asymmetry that no smarter commuter diplomacy is likely to overcome,” said Brad Bowman, a former national security policy adviser to Republican senators and now senior director of the Foundation for Defense, said. of Democracies brainstorm.
The Biden government has condemned the Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia and recently announced new sanctions against two Houthi military leaders, promising to “maintain” the rebels.
Bowman argued that the administration should move to interdict arms shipments to Yemen, which should deprive the Houthis of a steady supply of weapons.
“Blocking access to key weapons and technology from Iran could increase the incentives for the Houthis to come to the negotiating table in good faith,” Bowman said.
Charlene Gubash reports from Cairo.