Iran's Deadly Ambition (7 page)

A decade later, this rebellion is on the march. In 2004, the Houthi movement was modest in size, estimated at just 2,000 fighters.
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Since then, it has expanded in both size and geographic scope. In late 2011, its leadership claimed to command more than 100,000 members.
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Today, those numbers are estimated to be larger still.

The Houthi rebellion’s resilience and the political and territorial gains it has made despite a massive, sustained crackdown from authorities in San
a have a great deal to do with Iran’s assistance. For years, rumors circulated about the clandestine role the Islamic Republic assumed by financing, assisting, and even coordinating Yemen’s Houthis in their struggle; however, both Iran and the Houthis denied this connection. In a 2011 interview with Dubai’s
The National
newspaper, Houthi leader Mohammed Abdul Salam insisted that “[t]he people of Yemen are supporting us. Our power is through them and not through Iran.”
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Nonetheless, Iran’s covert involvement has been unmistakable. A 2012 expose by the
New York Times
described how Iranian smugglers, backed by the Quds Force, the elite paramilitary unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, were shipping AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades, and other weapons to the Houthis.
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The following year provided even more concrete
proof of Iranian meddling, with the interdiction by Yemeni authorities of an Iranian dhow carrying weapons, including ten Chinese anti-aircraft missiles. Officials in both San
a and Washington confirmed, in the wake of the seizure, that the weapons were intended to aid the Houthi rebels.
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Iran was also said to be providing sustained logistical, political, and financial support to the rebellion.
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So pervasive did Iran’s meddling become that, in March 2014, President Hadi took the unprecedented step of publicly pinning the blame on Tehran for Yemen’s ongoing instability. “Unfortunately, Iranian interference still exists,” Hadi told the pan-Arab newspaper
Al Hayat
. “We asked our Iranian brothers to revise their wrong policies towards Yemen, but our demands have not borne fruit. We have no desire to escalate [the situation] with Tehran but at the same time we hope it will lift its hand off Yemen.”
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This assistance hardened the political posture of the Houthis, who rebuffed repeated efforts on the part of the Hadi government to reach a political compromise. It also helped tip the scales decisively in the Houthis’ favor. The Houthis went on the offensive, seeking to secure key strongholds in Yemen’s west, including the strategic port of Midi, close to the country’s shared border with Saudi Arabia. Their actions naturally set off alarm bells in Riyadh, with observers describing the Houthi advance as a “grave threat.”
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It culminated in the fall 2014 Houthi takeover of portions of the Yemeni capital, San
a—a move that made the Iranian-supported rebels de facto power brokers in Yemen’s future.
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Today, the Shiite rebels have assumed still greater control and are actively attempting to unseat Yemen’s president and government. This has led neighboring Saudi Arabia to intervene militarily in an attempt to beat back their advance.
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Tehran, meanwhile, is exploiting other fissures in the Yemeni state as well. As one government official told London’s
Asharq al-Awsat
newspaper in July 2012, “Tehran is providing financial and logistical support to the secessionist movement, whilst it is also working to train some armed movements in southern Yemen, in addition to establishing a network of relations with Yemeni parliamentarians, political activists, journalists and writers. Iran is also funding media operations and political parties with the objective of thwarting the transition of power in Yemen.”
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Iran, in other words, is working hard to penetrate, fragment, and destabilize Yemen, using time-tested methodology perfected on other foreign-policy fronts. As it has done elsewhere in the region, Iran is trying to empower the Shia minority in order to challenge Yemen’s established Sunni-dominated status quo. And, by all accounts, Iran has succeeded in doing just that.

A PROXY WAR IN SYRIA

In March 2011, the Arab Spring came to Syria. Prompted by antiestablishment protests in Tunisia and Egypt, opposition activists in the southern city of Deraa began their own low-level civic activism, ranging from street gatherings to spray-painting graffiti. Government forces responded with a spate of detentions, which in turn generated massive street protests and an even wider governmental crackdown. Over the course of some six weeks, dozens of activists were killed by government forces. The deepening repression, however, didn’t quell the protests. Rather, it galvanized still greater opposition, which led to the emergence of a constellation of rebel forces and the country’s descent into an outright civil war that persists to this day.

Over time, Assad’s war became Iran’s, too. Syria has long ranked as Iran’s most reliable regional partner, and the two countries (with their joint proxy Hezbollah) make up
the “axis of resistance” aimed at fighting the United States and Israel.

Not surprisingly, Syria’s chaos attracted Iran. Since the start of the fighting, the Iranian regime has become a vital—if undeclared—player in the bloody conflict taking place between the Assad regime and its assorted opponents, both domestic and foreign.

Publicly, Iran has sought to portray a constructive political image through its Syria policy. The Iranian regime, for example, has made a very public show of sending large quantities of humanitarian aid to help alleviate the crisis in Syria, and has been doing so despite significant domestic criticism.
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In September 2013, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif even went so far as to offer the Islamic Republic’s help in ridding Syria of chemical weapons.
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Behind the scenes, however, Iran has pursued a decidedly more assertive—and destructive—role.

Most visibly, Iran’s aid has come in the form of foreign fighters. The Iranian regime is thought to have deployed a large contingent of IRGC forces to the Syrian battlefield. Their number includes hundreds of trained snipers, who have reinforced Syrian troops and increased their deadliness against Syria’s opposition.
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Iran, together with its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, has also played a key role by organizing pro-Assad militias among Syria’s Alawite and Shia communities, as well as by organizing foreign fighters from Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon. Iranian officials boast that these “popular committees” now total upward of 50,000 fighters who benefit from training provided in both Iran and Lebanon.
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Iran, moreover, is actively seeking to expand its involvement. A May 2014 expose in the
Wall Street Journal
stated that the IRGC has been actively recruiting thousands of refugees
from Afghanistan to join the fight in Syria. In exchange, these “volunteers” are offered a monthly salary of $500 and stabilization of their traditionally tenuous residency status in the Islamic Republic.
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Iran is assisting the Assad regime by other means, too. The Iranian regime has been complicit in providing significant amounts of arms and war materiel to the Syrian government.
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This transfer includes sophisticated battlefield hardware. Over the past three years, the Islamic Republic has translated its rapid development of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology into an export commodity, supplying Syrian regime forces with several variants of its indigenously developed UAVs, including the Pahpad AB-3, the Yasir, and the Shahed 129—equipment that has been used by Assad against his domestic opposition.
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Iran’s aid to Syria has also taken on an economic dimension. Iran, still under economic pressure from the West, takes part in “sanctions-busting” by providing the Assad regime with monthly lines of credit worth some $500 million with which to purchase crude oil and other products that the United States and Europe have sought to limit.
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Iran has played a more active role here as well, supplying crude oil to the Syrian regime in Iranian-flagged tankers in spite of Western restrictions, thereby providing Damascus with much-needed economic relief.
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