Rockets over Riyadh

The Saudis’ active war cannot entangle the U.S.

The Houthis in Yemen firing rockets into Saudi Arabia is understandable, given the tons of bombs that Saudi Arabia, aided by the United States, has rained down on Yemen for years. But the affair cannot end well for the United States.

Reports indicate that Houthi militias in Yemen on Tuesday fired a missile at Riyadh, the capital of bordering Saudi Arabia. According to the Saudis, the Houthi missile — the second such attempt — was intercepted and shot down without its having done any damage. The Saudis’ anti-aircraft capacity has been sold them by the United States. The claim was that a first Houthi rocket had been shot down too, but there is some uncertainty surrounding that incident, in particular the efficacy of the interception rendered by an American defense system.

There are a number of troublesome aspects to this expansion of the war that Saudi Arabia and other majority-Sunni Muslim Persian Gulf States, with logistical support from the United States, have been waging against the Shiite Houthi Muslims, who control the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, for several years now. Yemen’s population has been ravaged by the war, suffering from famine and a cholera epidemic as well as the continued bombing, which has destroyed the country’s infrastructure, including health care and education.

One of these is that Sunni Saudi Arabia sees the conflict, and the origin of the rockets the Houthis are now firing at them, as part of an ongoing struggle in the Middle East with majority-Shiite Muslim Iran. It is true that the Houthis are unlikely to be able to build, arm and fire the rockets themselves. It is also true that Iran has in the past provided relatively light support to the Houthis. At the same time, the Middle East is and has been for years an open arms market where, for money, anyone can have pretty much any piece of weaponry sought. Weapons are manufactured and sold by Egypt, Israel, Russia and other countries, and there are piles of them left over for sale from the region’s various wars, most recently the Syrian war.

It is also a little surprising that the Saudis should now be making such a fuss over Houthi rockets, given the Saudis’ bombing of Yemen.

A second serious issue brought to the fore by the Houthi rocket attacks is the fact of the basic fragility of Saudi Arabia as a structure. Much of the work in the country is done by foreign labor, most of it from other Muslim countries, which could easily harbor terrorists. The Saudis’ new leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is in the process of making changes in how the place operates, some of them upsetting to the status quo. In addition, he appears to be taking a more militant position toward Iran, Saudi Arabia’s strongest rival, apart from Israel, in the region.

It is hard to say what impact a successful Houthi rocket attack on Riyadh, or even more serious, a crossborder or terrorist attack in Riyadh or another Saudi city, would have on matters there. Needless to say, it would be new and disturbing to the Saudis. The third problem, this time for the United States, is that, first, the United States has been supporting the Saudis in their assault on Yemen, a matter well known to the Houthis. Second, particularly since President Donald Trump’s May visit, the United States has been strengthening its alliance with Saudi Arabia, tacitly expressing agreement with its campaign against Iran and its influence in the region. That influence, by the way, is expanding, first through Shiite control of the postwar regime in Iraq, and second, with Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon having played an in-the-event successful role in the Syrian war.

All of which is to say, if Saudi Arabia, through continued pursuit of the war in Yemen, supported by the United States, provokes a serious campaign of rocket attacks and perhaps other incursions on its territory by the Houthis, it will be no time until it calls on the United States for more military help. What is really needed, including to stop the extensive human suffering in Yemen, is an end to the bombing and rocket attacks and the launching of a credible peace process between the Saudis and Yemenis.

The United States does not need to be pulled into another war in the region, particularly one that might come to include Iran. In addition to our relatively light involvement in Yemen, our forces are also engaged in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Syria. America has other priorities.