Saudis embark on a mission in Yemen with uncertain ends

King Salman of Saudi Arabia is a "lion" and the pilots leading bombing raids against Houthi rebels in Yemen are "soldiers of God" in the latest poem penned by Aayed al-Qarni, a popular Saudi cleric.

Available online with images of jets streaking across the sky and bombs exploding, the ode calls on the Saudi air force to "batter the gathering places of Satan's band, the worshippers of idols". In an attack at Iran's supreme leader, it adds: "Let [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei die of frustration and anger."

There is no mistaking the celebratory mood across the Gulf region, and particularly in Saudi Arabia, as the Sunni Muslim kingdom embarks on an aerial conflict in Yemen that it has presented as a long-awaited assertion of its power against Shia Iran and its Houthi proxies.

"We are living the 'Saudi era par excellence'," wrote Mohamed al-Saed in Al-Hayat, the pan-Arab newspaper. Commentators say the Saudis are providing leadership and taking into their own hands the defence of the region against perceived Iranian expansionism instead of relying on Washington's protection. Indeed, as Abdulaziz al-Qassim, a commentator for Saudi Arabia's Al Watan newspaper, wrote, the US has "stabbed the kingdom in the back" by striking last week's nuclear deal with Iran.

Though analysts abroad voice concern that the Saudis' Operation Decisive Storm may end up destroying what remains of the Yemeni state and empowering al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or Isis, which are already present in the country, no such caveats are being heard in the region where Iran is perceived as the power behind the Houthis.

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> Ahmed al-Jarallah, editor of Kuwait's Al-Seyassah newspaper, praises the operation as a "hurricane to uproot the Persian plan, especially in the Gulf. If Iran considered that expansion within the region would be its prize for signing a deal . . . over its nuclear program, it is wrong."

Such statements speak not just to Gulf anxieties about Iranian influence in Yemen but also to the entrenched mistrust and sectarian rivalry fuelling the broader conflict between the Saudi-led Sunni camp and Shia Iran, which is already unfolding in other regional arenas, such as Iraq and Syria.

The nuclear deal has heightened fears that a resurgent Iran, free of economic sanctions, would be more empowered to interfere in Arab affairs.

Outside the Arab region, however, some argue the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen has no discernible endgame and that without a ground war, which the kingdom appears reluctant to launch, it will be difficult to roll back Houthi gains.

"I do not think you can dislodge the Houthis . . . only by military action from the air," says Gregory Gause, a Saudi affairs specialist at Texas A & M University. "The Saudis may be setting themselves up . . . If they fail what happens next?"

Mr al-Qassim, an independent analyst and lawyer in Saudi Arabia, says the purpose of the military action is to create conditions needed for a political solution. "For the first time Saudi power has been actualised. The equation on the ground in Yemen has to change."

But there is also a fear that in a country already fragmented and riven with tribal conflicts, the intervention could bring further chaos - destroying the last vestiges of the Yemeni state and creating the conditions for al-Qaeda and Isis to expand.

"The real danger is that the longer the conflict continues, the stronger the various al-Qaeda groups could become," says Fawaz Gerges, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics. Al-Qaeda has already attacked a Yemeni jail and freed militant fighters, he notes. "This is reminiscent of what happened in Iraq - where hundreds of former prisoners are now leading the fighting."

Mr Georges also makes the point that while the Houthis share some religious practices with the Shia, they are closer in many ways to Yemeni Sunnis - evidence that their struggle is at heart political rather than sectarian.

Portraying the fight in Yemen as part of a wider Sunni-Shia confrontation could, he argues, become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"My fear is that they will have an identity shift and more Houthis will see themselves as Shia. The question for me is why deliver 10m Houthis into the arms of Iran."

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