As the recent Saudi air and ground raids along the Yemeni border intensified, Egypt’s Nilesat TV network and Saudi-owned Arabsat simultaneously dropped Iran’s Arabic-language news station al-Alam (The World) from service. When living in Cairo I would occasionally tune into the station and watch some of their bog standard pro-Iranian news coverage or a stale documentary about the Iran-Iraq war. To me, the real surprise was that Egypt and Saudi Arabia would continue to allow the Iranian propaganda station on their satellites at all during a time when the two states were locked in a media war with Tehran.
The “media war,” going strong since mid-2008, was equal parts vicious and absurd: for the absurd see my article at ISN from a while back on a bungled Iranian documentary film portraying Sadat’s assassin, Khaled Islamboli, as a martyr, and for vicious, see the Egyptian accusations that radicalized pro-Iranian Egyptians committed last year’s Khan el-Khalili bombing. Another facet was Arab accusations of Iranian proselytizing of Shi’a Islam around the Arab world.
Was al-Alam taking the Houthi rebels’ side in coverage of the current strikes? A quick scan of articles on al-Alam’s front page indicates that they were, but the thrust was more anti-Saudi, casting Riyadh as the aggressor, than it was pro-Houthi. But the anti-Saudi messaging is hardly stronger than the stuff that al-Alam had been broadcasting (on Saudi and Egyptian satellite bandwidth) for the last few years.
The question of material Iranian aid for the Houthi rebels, which have been fighting the Yemeni central government in on-off wars since 2004, is much more murky. The Yemeni army has essentially blockaded the Sa’ada Governorate, and cut off access to independent press or NGOs to the warzone for the last few years (Although HRW put out an excellent report on the situation a few years back, which is here). Absent reliable information, accusations of Iranian funding for the Huthi rebels, who are Zaidi Shi’a (as opposed to Iran’s Twelvers), have flown and been multiplied amid tense regional circumstances.
But after spending several days protesting its own involvement, today, Iran’s Mottaki fired away at Saudi Arabia for its interference in Yemen. BBC snippet:
A country which seeks a role to establish peace and stability in all countries in the region… cannot have a role in creating tensions,” Mr Mottaki said.
“We strongly warn the regional countries to be careful, to be vigilant,” he added.
“Monetary aid, providing arms to extremist and terrorist groups or actually taking action against them and crushing those groups or the people and embarking on military operations – these all will have negative consequences.”
In an apparent reference to Saudi Arabia, with whom Tehran has had hostile relations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Mr Mottaki said there were “certain people who add fuel to some crises”.
“Those people should be assured that the smoke and the fire they have ignited will entangle them themselves,” he added.
This incident, far from over, has taken Saudi-Iranian tensions to their highest point in years. At very least, the episode will further hamstring those who seek to integrate Iran into the region and help those pushing the Sunni-Shia strife narrative. At worst, we could have a potentially destabilizing conflict in Southern Arabia. Either way, the citizens of Sa’ada will continue to pay a heavy price, as international attention is focused elsewhere.
-WW
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