Apart from Yemen’s Houthis, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s “resistance front” is collapsing. Israeli strikes castrated Hezbollah, and Turkey’s proxy Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham sent Syrian President Bashar al-Assad into exile. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani deserves credit for forcing Iran-backed militias like the Badr Corps and Qais al-Khazali’s Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq to stand down and refrain from dragging Iraq into the Iran-Israel dispute.
The Houthis receive Iranian weaponry in three ways: by air through Sana’a International Airport; via the Port of Hudaydah [Hodeidah] or nearby smaller ports; or through the sparsely populated desert routes via Oman.
The Sana’a airport is a challenge, but the Houthis do not receive the volume of weaponry by air. Flights into Sana’a are too easy to track and Hezbollah’s loss of Beirut’s International Airport makes it harder to supply given the Iranian desire to maintain plausible deniability.
Successive U.S. administrations and other international actors, including the United Nations, have used the Sultanate of Oman’s good offices to mediate and negotiate with the Houthis.
Hudaydah is a real problem. The 2018 Stockholm Agreement was U.N. smoke and mirrors. Its much vaunted inspections regime requires voluntary compliance. Meanwhile, rather than extricate Houthi control over the port, the United Nations enabled it by allowing Houthi port workers with a nod-and-wink to change uniforms in exchange for salaries. In effect, the Houthis struck the same deal in Hudaydah as Hezbollah long ago made at Beirut’s international airport: The terror group would give the international community plausible deniability about their identity by dressing in the uniforms of civilian workers, all the while transforming the transport hub into a money laundering and weapons smuggling center.
Increasingly, however, the Oman route is just as important to the supply of Iranian weaponry to the Houthis. Successive U.S. administrations and other international actors, including the United Nations, have used the Sultanate of Oman’s good offices to mediate and negotiate with the Houthis. However, Oman’s relationship with the Houthis is analogous to Qatar’s relationship with Hamas and the Taliban: Muscat uses the cover of mediation to advocate for the victory of one side over another. Oman’s support for the Houthis is less in sympathy for Iran than it is a historic animosity toward South Yemen: Following the United Kingdom’s departure from Yemen, communists took over Aden and declared the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen.
Communism was inherently destabilizing because its core goal was to expand revolution. In South Yemen, this translated into support for the Dhofar Rebellion, a communist-inspired movement to carve out a new state from southern Oman. Oman defeated the rebellion with the assistance of Iran, then under the shah, but suspicion about South Yemen persists. This has increased as the Southern Transitional Council has transformed southern Yemen into the country’s most successful region. Muscat fears that South Yemen could secede if the Internationally Recognized Government defeats the Houthis. At a minimum, Omani officials want to keep the Houthis alive, if not cheer outright for a Houthi victory.
Few American analysts know Yemen as well as Fernando Carvajal. He lived in Yemen for the better part of 20 years and served as an armed groups and regional expert on the U.N. Security Council panel of experts on Yemen between April 2017 and March 2019. Fluent in Arabic, he is intimately familiar with Yemeni politics, tribes, and terrain; there is hardly a town, let alone village, in which he does not have direct experience.
The United States and international community must hold Oman to account for what happens in Mazyunah, sanctioning Oman for its double game as need be.
He points me to Al-Mazyunah as a concern that the international community must address. An industrial zone that spans both sides of the Oman-Yemen frontier, Oman and the Houthis use Mazyunah as a staging ground for weaponry to smuggle inland to Houthi forces now threatening Yemen’s oil center near Marib. Simply put, the United States and international community must hold Oman to account for what happens in Mazyunah, sanctioning Oman for its double game as need be, and targeting Houthi transit into and out of the town and industrial zone.
While the U.S. Navy plays whack-a-mole with Houthis closer to the Red Sea, the Trump administration will not starve the Houthis of their Iranian weaponry until it begins targeting smuggling across the Omani border. The U.S. Navy by no means should bomb Oman but it should maintain 24/7 satellite and drone surveillance over Mazyunah and target any Houthis or tribal groups on the Yemeni side of the border.
The way to contain forest fires is not to pump water on one-third or one-half of the conflagration, but to prevent the flames from accessing any fuel to continue their burn.
