Abdulrahman Al-Rashed, the former general manager of Al Arabiya News Channel, and former editor in chief of Asharq Al-Awsat, wrote an op-ed for Arab News, in which he advocated that in order to remove the threat posed by the Houthis, we must go after their backers: the Iranian Regime.
After all, the Houthis are merely the weapons that Iran is using in order to attack Yemen and by extension Saudi Arabia.
“Through the Houthis, Iran plans on finding its place at the Kingdom’s southern border, which poses a grave danger not only for Saudi Arabia, but also for any administration in Sanaa, ”Rashed wrote:
Saudi Arabia is obviously keen to protect its borders from infiltration by terrorists and traffickers, as well as achieving peace in Yemen, which is why it is fighting to protect the Western-approved Yemeni government.
According to Rashed, Riyadh suspects that the Houthi movement is a Trojan horse for Tehran, with the aim of encircling the Kingdom who has three options: to continue fighting hostile forces everywhere in Yemen, to continue providing the Yemeni government with military support to strengthen its influence in the region or to focus on protecting its lands and establish a buffer zone on its southern border.
“The second option, completely walking out of the war, is not feasible because several forces — such as Iran and Al-Qaeda — would become active, causing the legitimacy to deteriorate,”Rashed writes.
He notes that the Houthis and their supporters are a minority in Yemen, no more than 10% of the overall population, and their level of interference is not due to support by the people but by support from the Iranian Regime.
“They are a small extremist religious group that is politically and ideologically affiliated with Iran,” he wrote. If left untackled, the Houthis could soon pose the same level of threat as Al-Qaeda