The claimed acquisition by Yemen’s Houthi rebels of hypersonic missiles capable of penetrating Israeli air defences threatens to further heighten Middle East tensions, as Saudi Arabia calls for more than “pinprick bombings” to constrain the supply of weapons to the group.
Saudi Arabia, which supports the Yemen government opposing the Houthis, believes Iran has been arming the group, including with the weapons used in the attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. Those attacks have led to a halving of the traffic on the Red Sea route, pushing up the costs of maritime transport and damaging the Egyptian economy through disruption to the Suez canal.
But in the Houthi capital, Sana’a, from where the rebel group mastermind their continuing attacks on shipping, the leadership celebrated Sunday’s claimed attack on Israel – which landed in an open area near Ben Gurion international airport – as a homegrown breakthrough and claimed the technology was created by the hard work of Yemeni technicians. It promised more strikes would come. Prior to the attack the Houthis had issued warnings of some kind of attack on Israel.
Previous Houthi missile attacks have not penetrated far into Israeli airspace, with the only one reported to have hit Israeli territory falling in an open area near the Red Sea port of Eilat in March. An attack with an Iranian-made drone on Tel Aviv in July killed one person and wounded 10 others.
Israel used its Arrow and Iron Dome defences against the Houthi missile on Sunday but has not yet determined if any of the multiple attempts to intercept it were successful.
The Houthis, a Shia group that have held Sana’a since 2014, may have employed the Qadr F variant of Iran’s 20-year-old Qadr-110 or Ghadr-110 medium-range ballistic missile.
Iran has repeatedly been accused, including by the UN, of supplying weapons to the Houthis initially for use in fighting the Saudi-backed Yemen government based in Aden. Despite an intensive bombing campaign by the Saudis in 2016, the Houthis have proved impossible to displace, even mounting drone attacks into Saudi Arabia.
A ceasefire exists inside Yemen but the UN special envoy for the country, Hans Grundberg, told the UN security council that the threat of a return to all-out civil war remained.
Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi intelligence chief and diplomat, has expressed the kingdom’s disappointment at the way Iran has been helping the Houthis. Speaking at Chatham House in London on Friday, he called for more international action to block such assistance and said the “pinprick bombings” mounted on Houthi positions by US and UK naval forces in the Red Sea needed to be more effective.
“We have seen the deployment of European and US fleets along the Red Sea coast and more can be done there to interdict the supply of weaponry that comes to the Houthis from Iran,” he said. “Putting pressure on Iran by the world community can have a positive impact on what the Houthis can do in launching these missiles and drones to hit international commerce”.
Faisal claimed that by continuing to interfere in Arab states such as Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, as well as in Palestine, Tehran had not fulfilled its side of the diplomatic bargain struck between Iran and Saudi Arabia in China two years ago.
“The Houthis now hold the world as hostage in the Bab al-Mandab entrance to the Red Sea, and yet Iran is not showing that it can do something there if it wanted to, and the kingdom would have expected Iran to be more forthcoming in showing not just to us but to others that it can be a positive factor in securing stability and removing differences not just with Saudi Arabia but the rest of us.”
He said it was unclear if the Iranians could control the Houthis, and the world was in trouble if it could not.
Saudi Arabia has not joined the US military attacks because it says it has been pursuing a diplomatic route to form a national government in Yemen.
The commander of the Middle East-based US 5th Fleet, US Adm George Wikoff, has said sporadic US and UK bombardments of the Houthi positions along the Yemen coast has not yet led to commercial shipping returning.
The attacks caused a 50% drop in ship traffic through the Red Sea, prompting shipping companies to begin routing vessels around Africa, adding 11,000 nautical miles and $1m in fuel costs to journeys.
The Houthi attacks have continued despite multiple strikes against positions on the Yemen coastline by the US and Israel in recent months.