Middle East on knife edge
Yemen rebels hit Saudi airport with bomb-laden drone as Iran steps up uranium threats
YEMEN’S Iranian-allied Houthi rebels said yesterday they attacked a Saudi airport and military base with a bombladen drone, an assault acknowledged by the kingdom as tensions remain high between Tehran and the US. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
The attack on the Saudi city of Najran came after Iran announced quadrupling its uranium-enrichment production capacity a year after the US withdrew from its nuclear deal with world powers, though still a level far lower than needed for atomic weapons.
Underlining the tensions, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is seeking expanded executive powers to better deal with “economic war” triggered by the Trump’s administration’s renewal and escalation of sanctions targeting the Islamic Republic, the state-run IRNA news agency reported yesterday.
By increasing production, Iran soon will exceed the stockpile limitations set by the nuclear accord. Tehran has set a July 7 deadline for Europe to set new terms for the deal or it will enrich closer to weapons-grade levels in a Middle East already on edge. The US has deployed bombers and an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf over still-unspecified threats from Iran.
In the drone attack, the Houthis’ Al-Masirah satellite news channel said yesterday they targeted the airport in Najran with a Qasef-2K drone, striking an “arms depot”. Najran, 840km south-west of Riyadh, lies on the Saudi-Yemen border and has repeatedly been targeted by the Iran-allied Houthis. A statement on the state-run Saudi Press Agency quoted Saudi-led coalition spokesman Colonel Turki al-Maliki as saying the Houthis “had tried to target” a civilian site in Najran, without elaborating.
Al-Maliki warned there would be a “strong deterrent” to such attacks and described the Houthis as the “terrorist militias of Iran”.
Similar Houthi attacks in the past have sparked rounds of Saudi-led airstrikes on Yemen, which have been widely criticised internationally for killing civilians.
The New York Times last year reported that US intelligence analysts were based in Najran, assisting the Saudis and a US Army Green Berets deployment on the border.
Last week, the Houthis launched a co-ordinated drone attack on a Saudi oil pipeline. This month, officials in the UAE alleged that four oil tankers were sabotaged and US diplomats relayed a warning that commercial airlines could be misidentified by Iran and attacked. | AP