Yemen rebels pause attacks on Red Sea

SANAA, Aug 1, (Agencies): Yemen’s Houthi rebels announced a two-week pause in Red Sea operations Wednesday, after attacks against Saudi tankers last week prompted Riyadh to suspend oil shipments through a key waterway.

“The unilateral suspension of our naval operations is for a limited period,” the rebels said in a statement released by their defence ministry.

The Houthis’ Twitter and Facebook accounts said the suspension will last two weeks.

But “it can be renewed and expanded to other fronts if this initiative is wellreceived and reciprocated”, the statement said.

The Houthis are fighting a Saudi-led military coalition that backs Yemen’s government.

A spokesman for the coalition did not immediately respond to a written request for comment on the Houthis’ unilateral truce.

On July 26, Saudi Arabia said it was temporarily suspending oil shipments through the Bab al-Mandab Strait — one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes — after two oil tankers operated by Saudi shipping group Bahri were attacked, slightly damaging one vessel.

The pro-Houthi Al-Masirah television said at the time that the rebels had targeted a Saudi warship named Al-Dammam, without providing further details.

The Houthis, allied with Saudi Arabia’s regional arch-rival Iran, control Yemen’s capital Sanaa and Hodeida port, the entry point for around three quarters of the impoverished country’s imports.

The coalition on July 1 paused a ground offensive against Hodeida, in what coalition partner the UAE has described as a bid to give United Nations-led peace efforts a chance.

The head of the rebels’ revolutionary council, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, said Wednesday’s offer of a temporary maritime truce came as “support for UN mediation and peace efforts”.

UN envoy to Yemen Martin Griffiths has been pushing for a deal which envisions the rebels ceding control of Hodeida port to a UN-supervised committee.

Saudi Arabia and its allies joined Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s fight against the Houthis in 2015.

Yemen’s war has killed nearly 10,000 people and triggered what the UN calls the world’s largest single humanitarian crisis, with more than eight million Yemenis at risk of starvation.

UN experts say Iran might be willing to play “a constructive role” in ending the war in Yemen, though adding in a new report that Tehran still appears to be arming Yemen’s Houthi Shiite rebels with ballistic missiles and drones.

According to excerpts of a report to the Security Council obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, the panel of experts monitoring sanctions against Yemen raised the long-rumored possibility of Iran playing a role in restoring peace.

“The panel believes that Iran might now be willing to play a constructive role in finding a peaceful solution for Yemen, as evident in the country’s, ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to broker a cease-fire for the holy month of Ramadan together with some European nations,” the report said.

Iran has expanded its influence far beyond its borders in recent years, sponsoring tens of thousands of Shiite militiamen spread across Iraq and Syria and on to Lebanon. The rivalry between the predominantly Shiite Muslim nation of Iran and Sunni Muslim-dominated Saudi Arabia has torn the region apart, playing out on regional battlefields and fanning sectarian flames in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain and Yemen, all costly interventions for Tehran.

With the United States set to restore sanctions on Iran next week that were lifted under the nuclear deal that President Donald Trump has abandoned, the Iranian currency has been in freefall, giving rise to fears of prolonged economic suffering and further civil unrest in the country.

The Yemen conflict follows the Houthi takeover of the capital of Sanaa in 2014, which routed the internationally recognized government. A Saudi-led coalition allied with the government has fighting the Houthis since 2015.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the architect of the coalition intervention, and Abu Dhabi’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyans view the Houthis as direct proxies of an Iran emboldened by its battlefield successes in Iraq and Syria.

The UN and Western nations say Iran has supplied the Houthis with weapons, from assault rifles to the ballistic missiles they have fired deep into Saudi Arabia, including at the capital, Riyadh. Iran denies supplying any weapons to the Houthis.

But the panel of experts said in the latest report covering the first six months of 2018 that inspection of debris from 10 missiles launched into Saudi Arabia and unmanned aerial drones used by the Houthis “show characteristics similar to weapons systems known to be produced in the Islamic Republic of Iran.”