JERUSALEM—The proxy war between Sunnis and Shiites which has kept the Middle East seething in recent years took a sharp turn yesterday when Sunni states led by Saudi Arabia entered for the first time into direct military confrontation with an Iranian satellite, the Houthi militia in Yemen.
Warplanes from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states bombed Houthi targets while four Egyptian naval vessels sailed for Yemen in order to secure its waters for international shipping. Iran condemned the Saudi action, calling it "a dangerous step."
"The smoke of this fire will go into the eyes of Saudi Arabia as war is never limited to one place only," said a foreign ministry spokeswoman in Tehran.
It is not believed that Iran will attempt to intervene directly in Yemen, which is 1,200 miles from its own borders, but it has shown its ability in recent years to exercise influence throughout the region through proxy militias, generally Shiite.
The Houthis belong to an obscure branch of Shia Islam. Several thousand Houthi fighters seized large parts of Yemen last September, including the capital, Sana’a.
In recent weeks, Iranian officials have boasted that Tehran now holds the reins in four regional capitals—Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, and Sana’a. With growing assertiveness, Iranian leaders have spoken of the reincarnation of the regional empire founded by their Persian ancestors.
In Lebanon, the dominant military and political force is Hezbollah, which swears fealty to Tehran. In Syria, Iranian military and financial support have been the mainstay of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime for the past four years. In neighboring Iraq, the ruling Shia regime leans on Tehran for support while Iranian military advisers, as well as Iranian combatants, have taken a leading role in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq. Even Iran’s opponents give it high marks for the astuteness with which it has conducted its foreign policy or, as the Iranians see it, its empire building.
Yemen may prove to have been an overreach since its Sunni rivals have direct access to it, particularly Saudi Arabia which said Wednesday that it has massed 150,000 men on its border with Yemen in case air attacks prove insufficient to restore the rule of Yemen's ousted president, who has gone into hiding.
The United States, which last week evacuated a military base in Yemen from which its special forces have been waging a clandestine war against al Qaeda, has taken no direct part in the fighting thus far. However, it is believed to be supplying Saudi Arabia and its allies with critical intelligence.
What lifts the affair above local, or even regional, interest is the approach of Houthi forces to Yemen’s coast abutting the Bab-el-Mandeb Straits. This narrow waterway connects the world’s oceans with the Red Sea, which leads to the Suez Canal and Gulf of Eilat. Iran already controls the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, through which much of the region’s oil is shipped. Control of Bab-el-Mandeb would give it control over shipping through the Suez Canal as well as the Israeli port of Eilat. Iranian officials in recent weeks have even alluded to that potential as they spoke of their new strategic relevance.