It Wasn't Santa, But Still It's A Nice Present

Reports from the latest venue of combat between Islamist jihadists and the more-or-less civilized people of the world, Yemen, are of an airstrike on an al-Qaeda conflab in the caves. One of those present may or may not have been the New Mexico born Islamist cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki.

According to the reports al-Awlaki, who is best known for having been the on-the-Internet spiritual advisor of Major Hasan, may or may not have been killed by the Yemeni jets. If al-Awlaki has gone to his reward there is reason to be jolly this Christmas season given that the cleric joyously confirmed on al-Jazzera that the Fort Hood shootist had contacted him to find out if it was legal under Shariah to go ahead and kill his fellow countrymen and service members. Al-Awliki, drawing on his years of profound study of the intricate holdings of Islamic jurisprudence, apparently advised the Major that killing other Americans was just jake with the religion of peace and tolerance.

As al-Awlaki sagely observed to his interlocutor from al-Jazzera, loyalty to Islam by a Muslim trumps any minor consideration such as loyalty to one's fellow nationals or those who wear the same uniform and salute the same flag. Well, as the assorted multi-cultural mavins of the post modern chattering and academic classes have assured one and all for years now, nationalism and its cognates such as loyalty to one's country are both anachronistic and the raw materials for international adventurers such as W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

It is presumed that members of the aforementioned groups will hold memorial services for such a fine exemplar of the post-modernist sensibilities as al-Awliki. While they are at it perhaps they might find a kind word to say for the (perhaps or perhaps not) deceased leaders of al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula who may or may not have been at the troglodyte conference. After all these men were simply pursuing the goal of establishing an international comity of Muslims at the sole expense of national governments such as those in Yemen (which is not legitimate in the estimate of most Yemenis) and Saudi Arabia (which is feudalistic at best and paleolithic at worst.)

For those of us who are not members in good standing with either the chattering or academic classes or other self-defined elite congeries, the news out of Yemen, if confirmed, is all to the good. The last thing the US or the rest of the world needs is yet one more sanctuary for Islamist jihadists. Given the flawed nature of the Yemeni government, the influx of foreign jihadis from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan as well as Yemen's geographic position, the notion of the place becoming the next stronghold for the Bold and Courageous Warriors of the Prophet is not to be tolerated.

Backing the Yemeni regime in its long overdue efforts to squash the Houthi and abate the growing jihadi presence is the least worst course of action available to the US. Providing intelligence, logistic support, and even the occasional sea-launched cruise missile attack is a much lower risk operational concept than waiting for affairs in that particular global armpit reaching such a dangerous pass that direct on-the-ground intervention is required.

Airstrikes alone will not do the entire job of repressing the Houthi insurgency. Nor will airstrikes, cruise missiles, and limited Saudi Arabian ground incursions end the attraction of Yemen for jihadis displaced from earlier venues in the "clash of civilizations." The Yemeni government will have to use both political and military means to continue the campaign.

The government shows no particular political will for either the task of ground combat or the far more important and demanding one of enhancing its perceived legitimacy among a badly disaffiliated population. Frankly, the historical forces in Yemen, whether one cares to use the overthow of the emirate in 1961 or go back further to the foundations of the post-World War I Yemeni and Saudi states, are far more centripetal than centrifugal in nature.

The manufacture of Yemen was as artificial as the making of saccharine. The country has no organic reason to exist. The regime has no existential claim on either the loyalty or the affections of most Yemenis. These foundation conditions are exacerbated by the chronic poverty of the country which has seen its very limited oil and other natural resources exploited for the benefit of foreigners or a handful of the very well connected.

Yemen, like Somalia across the Gulf of Aden, is a creation of foreign diplomats working with the limited input of a very small number of locals who spoke an appropriate language, wore suits, and could make the right noises at the correct time. To call this process "self determination" is to commit a felony against language and common sense alike. To expect these artifacts of foreign manufacture to evolve into stable nation-states is to be terminally out-to-lunch.

In Yemen the interest of the US, as is the case in Somalia, Afghanistan, and a few other places, is limited to precluding its exploitation by Islamist jihadists. We (and other Western states) have no need to engage in the futile exercise of "nation-building" as such is beyond the capacity of mere humans. There is no need to provide Yemenis with a fully functioning, modern, pluralistic, democratic, secular state (as if such would be possible.) The only requirement is to end the appeal of Yemen to jihadis and those such as al-Awlaki who give them comfort and encouragement.

Al-Awlaki's father is quoted as condemning the US and President Obama for having murdered his son. The father holds that if his son had committed some crime he should be brought before the bar of justice. The retort to the father's accusation is simple: If his son is dead, he, according to his own beliefs, has been judged by the Highest Court of Islam.

As to the verdict of that Court (or as to its existence) the Geek offers no assessment.

Send Lawrence of Arabia!

The highly decorative and very expensive Army of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been alleged to have done the impossible. Reports from the Yemen Front maintain that the Dauntless Legions of the House of Sand have crossed the international frontier on the ground carrying the war to the Houthi insurgents of the desert waste called "Yemen."

The ground incursion joins with the ongoing air offensive against the Shia Houthi. It also raises the stakes in the rhetorical fusillades exchanged between Tehran and Riyadh.

The UN, or at least one small component thereof, has entered the fray as well. Richard Barrett, Coordinator of the al-Qaeda-Taliban Sanctions Monitoring Committee and a former UK counter terrorism expert, has warned that the game in Yemen has a crucial ramification. In his view the Saudi effort is a "must win" given that the al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) is harbored in the unstable Houthi dominated region and is very, very focused on toppling the House of Sand.

Barrett uses as support of his contention both the close association between the local leaders of AQAP and Osama bin Laden and the attack last August by a suicide bomber directed against the anti-terrorism capo of the Kingdom, Prince Mohammad bin Nayef. This attack came not that long after the Saudis announced with a globe wide blare that their security forces had busted hundreds of AQAP and related terrorist wannabes and thereby broken up a series of plots directed against the oil infrastructure of the country.

Barrett is right, of course. Yemen has long been a safe haven for al-Qaeda and similar Islamist jihadist groups. It is a state where government is minimal, feuds maximal, insurgencies endemic, and the call of Islamist jihadism loud. Overall Yemen is one very small step from being Somalia.

The Saudis have been aware of this unpleasant reality for quite a few years now. Long before 9/11, antedating the bombing of the USS Cole, prior even to the embassy bombings a decade back, the Saudi intelligence and security agencies have been well aware of goings on in Yemen. They have also been quite well aware of the role their own brand of Islam--Wahhibism--has played in the growth of Islamist jihadist sentiment and its expressions.

It has been knowledge of the latter which in large measure explains the strangely supine behavior exhibited by the Kingdom until recent weeks. As the ancient cliche has it, they have been hoisted by their own petard.

Looping into this inhibition is the Saudi fear of violence. The Kingdom has never (well, at least since the late 1920s) shown any real appetite for war, real war that is rather than the pretense of war, the war of boast, threat, bravado. They have preferred to spend money, pay bribes, cut deals, anything other than put faith in the gods of battle.

Buying weapons, polishing tanks, buffing up the jet fighters, looking good on parade, hiring the supernumerary members of the royal house as officers and gentlemen is one thing. Actually shooting, facing risks, perhaps even (Oh! Horrors!) getting hurt is another thing all together.

Not until the Houthi, having been bought, refused to stay bought, did the Kingdom remember what the guns, the bullets and the (purported) trigger pullers existed to do. Not until the Houthi committed the sin of lese majeste by both openly crossing the Saudi border and humiliating the local army detachment did the Kingdom find the political will to actually do something.

Of course the "something" was both more symbolic than militarily effective, more to its detriment than its benefit--the use of aircraft against remote villages in which genuine civilians were intermixed with Houthi combatants. Not surprisingly this effort even when coupled with Yemeni air strikes and artillery stonks might have produced the odd dead body or two but failed to quash the Houthis. Indeed, as as typically been the case in insurgencies ever since Ogg invented fire, the insurgents were strengthened in both political will and (probably but not verifiably) numbers.

The open and high visibility entrance of the Kingdom into the nasty little war also served to invite international interest. Highest on the list of those interested was and is Iran. While the role of the mullahocracy in the Houthi insurgency is not clear and may be quite limited to words and the occasional arms shipment, the Saudi action raised the ante. The Iranians called and raised in their turn.

Whether or not the Houthi insurgency was actually an Iranian proxy effort a month ago is still open to debate, but not so now. The Saudi high profile, self-defeating action of too much, too late has assured that the conflict now has a strong Iranian component.

The Iranian Deep Thinkers may have been deluded by their success to date with Hezbollah and Hamas or not, but they have now grabbed the Houthi tarbaby with both hands. The situation in Yemen is not akin to that which allowed the creation of Hezbollah as an effective Iranian tool over the past couple of decades. Nor is it akin to the political and religious broth of Gaza which facilitated the rise and continued dominance of Hamas.

Superficially there are similarities between Yemen today and Lebanon of thirty or twenty years ago. Lebanon then and Yemen today defined multi-party armed anarchy.

But the differences are critical.

Lebanon's version of shoot-your-way-to-power was essentially sectarian with the tipping point coming only after the interjection of Fatah fugitives from Jordan. The collapse came against the background of a relatively stable political system which had functioned reasonably well for the years following WW II.

Yemen has not been an organized polity since the overthrow of the Emirate nearly a half century ago. Since then it has been a pastiche of temporary alliances between tribes with an overlay of sectarian rivalry between the Shia leaning folks in the north and the Wahhibist influenced Sunni of the south. The Somali refugees have not and cannot play the destructive role of Fatah in Lebanon.

Another, very important factor is the absence of Syria in the Yemen conflict. Syria played the critical role in Lebanon. While American administrations from Reagan to W. Bush may not have liked nor accepted Syria's dominant place in Lebanon, there is no denying the fact that Assad (the father) imposed both stability and prevented the Iranian presence. While this did not please the Israel Lobby or Israel at the time, the stability provided by Assad's policies did the region more than a little good.

Back to the main point: There is no Syria conveniently adjacent to and involved in stabilizing Yemen and excluding Iran. Herein lies the difference for both policy makers in Tehran and Washington.

Both must make a calculation about the will and capacity of the Kingdom to play the part of Syria in Yemen. Of course, this means deciding whether or not the King has both the mental horsepower and the testicular fortitude of Assad Sr. To date there is no indication that the current incumbent or any likely successor is up to the task.

Actions of the boldness and resolve which characterized Assad pere throughout his rule do not seem to come naturally or easily to the House of Saud. The pervasive belief that money and deal making are always possible is not overcome with rapidity or facility,

The House of Saud always looks to someone else to do the heavy lifting on its behalf. The Saudis depend on the magic of their oil reserves to provide the necessary leverage on the US in particular to assure the lifting is done without pain to the House of Saud.

If this is the ultimate game plan of the Kingdom this time, they are barking up the wrong sand dune. The Obama administration is not casting about looking for one more armpit into which American troops might be inserted. The US currently has neither the political will nor the material capacity to wage one more stinking little war.

There is one caveat to this assertion. Should the Kingdom do something even more impossible to conceive of than putting its troops in harm's way--say, sign a peace treaty with Israel which included a statement of Israel's right to exist with current "settlements" intact and no Palestinian "right of return," all bets are off. The Obama administration would be willing to think the unthinkable and send the Marines in return for "peace in the Mideast."

Short of a miracle on this level, the Saudis are on their little old lonesome in the Houthi insurgency. A miscalculation or two and AQAP will let the House of Sand know all about it. The noise of bombs and smell of oil smoke will make sleep difficult even in the hermetically sealed, air conditioned tents of the House.

This outcome implies that the House and its current King will have to find a bit of old man Assad in the saddle bags of their camels. They will have to do more--a lot more--than drop some bombs and send a few humvees full of troops across the border.

Maybe there is a British archeologist out there somewhere studying some Crusader castle or another in Syria or Israel or Jordan who can channel the spirit of his long dead predecessor and become Lawrence of Arabia, the sequel. If he exists, and if he can dial spiritland, boy does he have an employment opportunity!

Beaucoup Tough Talk In Saudi Arabia--And Iran

The Houthi insurgency in Yemen is taking on more aspects of a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. There are strong hints from the Kingdom that the Iranians-Are-Behind-It-All school of thought is gaining both traction and momentum.

In addition to that growing consensus there are expressions of fear concerning the intentions of the Iranian government to "politicize" the Haj perhaps to the extent of fulminating another armed attack on the Grand Mosque along the lines of the embarrassing shoot-out at the Kaaba years ago. The Iranians are doing nothing to reduce the fears and anger in the Kingdom. To the contrary the men of the mullahs are pouring hot rhetoric on the flames.

The verbal attack on the Kingdom has been led by Ali Larjani, the current Speaker of the Majlis and former nuclear negotiator. Larjani is a very hard hard-liner as his his brother the recently appointed capo d'tutti capi of the Islamic Republic's judiciary. Both are strongly affiliated with and supported by the Supreme Leader, Khamenei. It is worth noting that Speaker Larjani is both slicker and smoother than president Ahemdinejad and is often seen as a necessary counterweight to the overly populist Orator-In-Chief.

With a measure of duplicity noteworthy even among the mendacious Tehran regime, Ali Larjani observed to a audience of visiting Sunni clerics--that's right, Sunni--that the Saudi Arabian air and artillery attacks on the Houthi (and any civilians unfortunate enough to be down range) were a clear violation of the Islamic stricture against Muslims waging war on Muslims. He concluded that the Saudi "massacre should cause all Muslims to feel outrage."

Fer sure, dude. You are kind of selective in what sort of Muslim-kills-Muslim episode is worthy of generating outrage in Muslim hearts and minds.

Not to be outdone in the rhetorical offensive, Ahmedinejad, while in Turkey called for dialog and restraint in the conflict. With a (presumably) straight face the Orator-in-Chief stated that Iranian policy "is only to strengthen the unity, brotherhood and cooperation among all nations."

The word, "all" must be defined in the mind of Ahmedinejad in a very strange and narrow manner. Certainly his view of "unity, brotherhood and cooperation" does not extend to the US, Israel, most, if not all, of Western Europe or Arab Muslim states which have the temerity to push back against the mullahs' attempts to export the Revolution.

Iranian ideas of cooperation are very narrowly construed if recent reports from unnamed diplomatic sources to the effect that the Iranians have completely rejected the UN backed nuclear materials plan are correct. The time for any sort of cooperation (and unity and brotherhood) on the nuclear contretemps other than a US and EU capitulation is apparently no longer short but totally exhausted.

The Iranians are quite willing to extend the benefits of "unity, brotherhood and cooperation" to non-state actors such as Hezbollah as the recent Francop Affair demonstrates. This is what has the Saudis riled.

There is a palpable fear in the Kingdom that Tehran intends to transform the Houthi from an annoying but minor insurgency to a full bore Hezbollah clone. This apprehension is far from groundless. The government of Yemen is quite reminiscent of the government of Lebanon in the days before Hezbollah, in effect, took it over.

The cloning of Hezbollah in Yemen would provide a powerful advantage to the Iranians in their strategy of becoming the regional hegemonic power. At the very least the growth of Houthi into a permanent feature in the politico-military landscape of the Arabian Peninsula would divert the Saudis, force the Kingdom to focus on internal security, and, lessen the capacity and will of the House of Sand to buck up the smaller states of the Gulf.

The gamesmanship of the mullahs in Yemen should be of major interest to the US. It is self-evident that the US would find some important national and strategic interests compromised if the Houthi become a larger feature in Peninsular politics. The US has gone through several painful (and way back in the Fifties one non-painful) engagements with the Lebanese political arena.

This should be enough to teach even the Americans that one Lebanon, one Hezbollah, is one too many. The time for the use of leverage, support, and assistance in helping the Saudis chart a course of stability in Yemen is right now--not a few weeks or months hence.

In the process the basic reality of Yemen must be understood. Yemen has no history of a national or even a well defined geographical identity. The current government is both corrupt (what else is new?) and inefficient (ditto.) The tribal congeries which constitutes the human terrain of Yemen is badly fractured as it has been most of the past century and more. The probability of a government generally conceded to be legitimate is next to zero.

The Yemen swamp is one where Uncle Sam cannot and should not tread directly. The Saudis, while far from overly competent, possess the necessary fundamentals of understanding, leverage, the willingness to safely if not discretely use force and something very real at stake--its own national security.

In any event the very best that can be hoped for in Yemen is the blockage of the Iranian ambition: the prevention of another Hezbollah arising in a very critical small corner of the world. The way in which the Saudis and whatever passes for a government in Yemen deal with the Houthi and the Iranians over the next few weeks will determine whether Yemen becomes (A) one more Lebanon complete with an Iranian puppet or (B) another Somalia or (C) stumbles on as it has for the past several years, doing a drunkard's walk along the cliff with a single misstep plunging it into the Gulch of Failed States.

All the Geek can offer by way of encouragement to either the House of Sand or the Nice Young Man From Chicago is a cheery, "Lots of luck, dudes."

Weapons (And Lies) "R" Us

More than ever the Tehran mullahocracy is acting the role of Global Bad Boy. OK, to err on the side of accuracy, while the mullahs have global ambitions, they are so far at least only able to act as a Regional Bad Boy. But, they are good at the job and certainly make no small plans when it comes to enhancing instability in the Mideast and Persian Gulf areas.

The Iranian assistance to Hezbollah is scarcely classified "Burn Before Reading" as the recent high visibility Israeli seizure of the latest gift from Tehran has made clear. The German owned, Antigua registered container vessel contained sufficient rockets, mortar shells, recoilless rifle ammunition, hand grenades, and small arms ammunition to start and maintain a fair sized war. It would have bolstered Hezbollah's already sizable stockpiles of warlike stores. It is interesting to note that at least some of the rockets are reportedly identical with those fired at US troops in Iraq a couple of years ago. A comparison of imagery makes that allegation credible in the extreme.

Less well publicized but equally indicative of Iranian trouble making ambitions is a recent report out of Yemen. Belatedly, the government of that hot and dusty insurgency ravaged geographical expression has announced it seized a boatload of Iranian origin arms bound for the Houthi insurgents.

Showing a rich appreciation of the need for cautious duplicity which is endemic in Mideast Arab diplomacy, the Yemeni government did not place the blame on Tehran. Whether or not this shipment was an exercise in free enterprise, it does represent an increase in the scale of Iranian efforts to assist their more-or-less co-religionists currently waging a defensive insurgency against the sort of central government.

The Iranian owned and flagged Mahan-1 was seized off the coast of Yemen. It had set sail from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas laden with a cargo of small arms, RPG launchers and shells, and other items of use to guerrilla insurgents. Its crew consisted of five Iranians and one Indian who were taken to the capital of Saana for "interrogation." (Waterboarding, anyone?)

Despite repeated allegations by the Yemeni government of Iranian involvement with the Houthi rebels, this is the first time the bad boys have been caught with the goods. Previously, the accusations have focused on small scale transfers from Iran via Eritrea. The Eritrean connection meets the test of inherent probability particularly when the role of that country in the chaos called Somalia is kept in mind.

Shipments via Sudan have also been rumored. Accounts as to the final destination of the arms leaving Sudan to Yemen on fishing boats from that country differ. It is plausible to contend that the final destination is not Yemen but rather Hamas controlled Gaza. This would track with the attack conducted by the IDF on a convoy bound from Sudan to Gaza as well as the recent reports of exploding fishing boats at the island of Mydi, which is a convenient transit point for either Gaza or the Houthi dominated north of Yemen.

While the badly fractured government of Yemen often seems more at war with itself than with the Houthi or al-Qaeda or the southern insurgents and cannot keep its story straight, the weight of evidence is on the side of direct Iranian involvement with the Houthis--and perhaps other elements in the ill-flavored Yemeni goulash.

Even if Washington seems either out-to-lunch on the recent developments in Yemen--and their implications for the future--Saudi Arabia is most assuredly not. The Kingdom has made no bones about its conviction that Iran is the major actor in the Houthi drama. The Saudis see the arms supply effort as being simply one strand of the many in the web being spun by Tehran around the Sunni majority Arabian Peninsula.

The Saudi anxiety about the growth of Tehran's machinations has been manifested in the Kingdom's willingness to actually use force against the Houthi after the uppity rebels had the temerity to kidnap and kill some Saudi border guards and "occupy" a few acres of scrub covered mountainside on the Saudi-Yemeni border. Considering the rarity with which the House of Saud does more than talk about fighting, this has been a major development with equally major implications for both the Kingdom and the US. (The Geek posted on this a few days back.)

The use of proxies is a time tested way of waging war without much risk. Both the US and (to a much, much greater extent) the Soviet Union employed this method throughout the Cold War. It is not surprising that the Iranians have picked up on the concept with a fair degree of success and utterly no plausible deniability. Rather than attempt to effectively disguise their efforts on behalf of clients such as Hezbollah, Hamas, or the Houthi, Iran simply lies.

Now, it has to be acknowledged that Tehran has elevated the practice of blatant, full-throated mendacity to an unprecedented level. It deserves reiteration in passing that Islam, particularly Shia Islam, not only allows but requires tergiversation when necessary to protect or advance the interests of the Faith or the individual believer.

Iranian lying is not limited to its relationship with proxies. It extends across the board. A recent example of this is the accusation by Iran that the three American hikers who inadvertently crossed the poorly marked Iran-Iraq border a couple of months back are actually CIA assets and would face trial for espionage. The charge is baseless on its very face given the success US and other intelligence services have enjoyed penetrating Iran.

There is a method in Iran's lying. In this case it is a means by which messages are sent to the Obama administration. The Tehran regime has knowingly and calculatingly upped the ante in the game of nuclear poker. The Koran-toting Islamists of Tehran and Qom are also sending a sub-text to Obama and Company.

The sub-text is clear. It reads, "Nicey-nice works as well with the Iranian regime as trying to kiss a rabid gorilla."

The US has had no choice except to allow the doomed string of negotiations started in Vienna what seems like decades ago. The exercise in futility has been necessary so as to show the world we are patient, ever ready to give peace a chance. It has also been critical to massaging the Russians into at least tacit support for one more round of "crippling" sanctions.

The Iranians behaved as every informed observer expected them to. First they seemed to go along with the IAEA brokered agreement on low enrichment uranium being sent elsewhere for enrichment to twenty percent and then returned as fuel rods. Then, assorted legislators and other heavies entered objections, protests, allegations that the West (including Russia) was untrustworthy.

The litany of complaints and listings of "injustices" perpetrated on Iran by the Great Satan and his confreres was followed by demands for basic changes in the seemingly struck bargain coupled with demands for additional time to consider the initial offer and its ramifications. It was a clear case of ya-da-ya-da and dabba-dabba-do.

The providential peregrinations of the American hiking trio now entered stage left. Their bodies became the way to escalate pressure on the US government. In a way identical to the pirates of Somalia, the government of Iran counts on the tears of family, the hopes of friends, the sentimentality of the media to exert leverage on the Obama administration, which is perceived in Tehran as lacking in both backbone and intestinal fortitude.

The Iranian regime, like Islamists everywhere, is firmly convinced that the US is really an episode of Oprah writ large. The mullahs and their hetmen are of the view that We the People and our government are far more ruled by tender feelings than by the stern requirements of rational policy considerations. They believe that the personalization of conflict in the bodies of three young citizens will outweigh the comparative abstractions of policy.

Perhaps at the very least, the tergiversators of Tehran hope for a "hostage" crisis with an outcome equivalent to that manufactured by the North Koreans a few months ago. Remember, the two young female electronic journalists kidnapped on the border by the North Koreans, convicted of espionage or spitting on the river or something only to be freed to the personal custody of former president Bill Clinton?

A dramatic gesture, a metaphoric bended knee by a suitably heavy duty American politico would serve the interests of the Iranian government--particularly the less-than-completely-legitimate Ahmedinejad. It would also fit larger Iranian needs.

To put the matter with brutal simplicity: There is no need to fear American massive ordinance penetrators when you have the flesh of three mediagenic Americans to interpose between your bunkers and the MOPs. Cynical exploitation of American sentimentality? To quote Sarah Palin, "You bettcha."

Why not? It worked thirty years ago. Just ask Jimmy Carter.

Will it work now? We don't know. But, someone ought to ask President Obama.

Saudi Arabia Goes To War (Sort Of)

The Saudis have a very fine record of buying weapons systems, the more expensive the better. The House of Sand also has a good history of talking tough, at least regarding Israel. However, the armed forces of the Kingdom usually have been either absent or very late arriving whenever and wherever there are real bullets being fired with genuinely hostile intent.

This has changed of late. The Houthi insurgents of Yemen had the temerity to cross the border into the Land of the Two Mosques with unpleasant results for the local Saudi outpost. The Saudis responded with air attacks on villages in Yemen suspected of supporting or hiding the Houthi fighters. Along with the fast mover hits on the adobe and rock hooches of Yemen, the Saudi ground forces moved back into the border area after the Houthis had withdrawn either with or without prisoners. (Reports on that vary and an assessment as to which might be more likely is a bit risky since the Houthi are not noted for their propensity to take prisoners, but balancing this is the potential for propaganda.)

The background of this border operation is murky. The Houthis maintain that they had a deal with the Kingdom to use a piece of border terrain. They aver the Saudis had promised not to allow the Yemeni forces to cross this area in order to attack the Houthis but reneged on the deal. The border raid was in revenge for this Saudi sell-out.

The air strikes conducted by the Saudis were complemented by artillery fire from the Yemeni army. Most of those downrange were probably civilians as the fighters normally disperse to the rugged, cave pocked terrain outside of the mountain villages when under threat. Whatever the reality on the ground, the Saudis have claimed success in killing "infiltrators."

The operations against the Houthi will be time limited and involve few, if any, ground forces. The Kingdom is not at all willing to find itself drawn more deeply into the affairs of Yemen despite the threat presented by Yemen based al-Qaeda assets. The assertions by the Saudi military and government that only territory on the Saudi side of the border was attacked is credible if one limits consideration to ground force actions only. It is not credible with respect to air strikes.

It will be hard for the Saudis to maintain their hands-off approach if the Houthi insurgency continues much longer. The Kingdom and other Sunni members of the Gulf Coordination Council have already made repeated references to the role Iran is playing in the Houthi war.

There is little doubt Iran has provided some assistance to the Houthi even though the nature and amount of that assistance is a matter for debate. At the same time the Kingdom has provided military materiel as well as financial assistance to the Yemeni government. So far the Saudi aid has been a matter of too little even if not really too late.

The Kingdom has also responded to the out-of-Yemen threat with a high-tech Maginot fence which is both much longer and orders of magnitude more expensive than the American Great Fence of the Southwest. The Saudi excursion into fence building will probably prove to be a great expenditure for nothing. Even Saudi officials have admitted the fence will not stop infiltrators. (They hope it might deter vehicles.)

The US, not surprisingly, has expressed "concern" over the recent escalation in fighting. It would be in the overall American (and Western) interest to be more than merely concerned.

There is more at stake in this particular armpit of the globe than either the rights and immunities of civilians or the sanctity of the Saudi border. Armpits come in pairs. Yemen is one. Conveniently right across the Gulf of Aden is the other. Somalia.

As al-Shabaab gains both sway and momentum in Somalia, it has been joined by an ever increasing number of fugitive Islamist jihadists from Iraq and even Afghanistan and Pakistan. Unless a hostilities termination and conflict resolution formula can be found for Yemen, there is little doubt that Islamist jihadists will find a supportive environment in the rocks and deserts of that monument to Muslim instability.

The presence of profoundly anti-Western, anti-American Islamist jihadists in full flourish on both sides of the Gulf of Aden would put a severe crimp in the maritime commerce through the Suez Canal. The repercussions of this would not be beneficial to either the West or the feudal sheikdoms of the Mideast. It would be surprising in the extreme if the mullahs and their stooges in Tehran are unaware of this.

The Saudis will continue to try to bribe their way out of the unpleasant situation developing on their border. The House of Sand will probably try to induce the Americans (or other infidels from, say, the EU) to do the heavy lifting so that stability might be imposed in Yemen before the noise of exploding VBIEDs disturbs the Kingdom's tranquility unduly.

The operative word for the Obama administration to be considering in this venue is "leverage." The question is which country has the longer, greater lever: The US or Saudi Arabia and its cohorts in the Gulf Cooperation Council.

The Obama team had best consider the matter seriously and quickly. More depends upon the use of leverage than the fly rich rocks and sand of Yemen. Can we say, "Comprehensive Mideast peace?"

You betcha, bubba, there is a lot of potential in the Yemen-Houthi affray. It all depends on how it is viewed--and used.