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| Arabia |
| Gulf Arabs wrest strategic Yemen island from Iran-allied group |
| 2015-10-08 |
| [YEMENONLINE.INFO] Perim Island may be a small lump of windswept volcanic rock at the entrance to the Red Sea but its capture by Gulf Arab forces from Houthi ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of having ties to the Iranian government, which wouldn't suprise most of us. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews... fighters was a welcome victory for Yemen's government and its allies. Gulf Arab troops swooped in from air and sea last week to take back Perim, which sits on one of the world's most important sea lanes. The successful action denied Iran, the Houthis' main ally, a symbolic foothold astride trade routes as the Saudi-led Gulf Arab states and Tehran vie for influence across the Arab world. "The island has now been completely secured by the coalition and the resistance forces from among its people," Rami Fahmy Mayuni, a tribal chief of the island's original inhabitants and commander of its militia fighters, told news hounds flown to Perim by United Arab Emirates forces for a tour. In 2013, more than 3.4 million barrels of oil per day passed through the 20 km (12 mile) wide Bab al-Mandab Strait linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a big reason why Egypt and the United States vowed to defend the security of shipping there as the Houthis descended upon it in March. The warring parties appeared to receive the message and oil tankers and cargo ships continue to heave along, untroubled by the ground combat grinding slowly up Yemen's western coast. The white-washed British colonial buildings of the island known in Arabic as Mayun, now looking like an abandoned movie set crumbling in the blazing sun, have witnessed more than one historic upheaval over the last century. When the Red Sea linked British ports to the riches of India via the Suez Canal, its lighthouse kept vigilant watch on Yemen's mainland for raids by the Ottoman Turkish empire until it collapsed after World War One. |
| Posted by:Fred |