How Saudi Arabia and Iran shared the rise and fall of Ali Abdullah Saleh

A supporter of Yemen's former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. Picture by Hani Al-Ansi/DPA/PA Images. All rights reserved.It is often said
that the troubles of the post-Arab Spring nations is their
unfortunate metamorphosis into a regional proxy war between Saudi
Arabia and Iran. In the case of Yemen, this takes the form of
understanding the roots of the conflict as taking place between Saudi
Arabia and the ‘pro-Iran Houthi rebels’. Such analysis, however,
often presumes the disappearance of the original Arab Spring forces,
and consequently the way regional status-quo powers such as Saudi
Arabia reacted to their development. In the case of Yemen, a product
of such approaches was the dangerous underestimation of the critical
role of one crucial actor: the recently-deceased Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Even by the
standards of the region’s dictators, Saleh was known for his desire
never to hold onto power, constantly promising not to run for
re-election and reneging at every cycle. Despite also being a member
of the Houthis’ Zaidi sect, he had little regard for sectarian
loyalty; in the pursuit of power he allied with Sunni Salafists
against Zaidi Houthis, and later with the Houthis against everyone
else. In power, he was accused of simultaneously fighting and keeping
alive insurgencies in order to extol military aid from Saudi
Arabia and the US.

For years after the coup, Houthi sympathisers and outlets portrayed Saleh as a ‘leader’ and ‘national symbol’

In the Houthis,
it appeared that he had met similarly pragmatic allies, who were
prepared to break with the consensus of Yemen’s various
revolutionary forces and opposition parties – stretching
from Islamists to socialists to Nasserists – to provide Saleh
with the necessary public relations cover for the coup against the
transitional government of Abd-Rabbo Mansur Hadi in 2014. For years
after the coup, Houthi sympathisers and outlets portrayed Saleh as a
‘leader’ and ‘national symbol’. Somewhat similar to the
Muslim
Brotherhood’s failed partnership with the military during the
post-Mubarak transitional setting, their opportunistic and
counter-revolutionary alliance with Ali Abdullah Saleh turned the
plethora of Yemen’s Arab Spring forces against them. Eventually,
the man who once said that “ruling Yemen is like dancing on the
head of snakes” finally overplayed his cards, getting killed by the
last pet snake he had empowered over the past three years.

Ironically, Saleh was the architect of his own death. Here, contrary
to the notion often proclaimed by western media of a ‘Houthi rebel
takeover’ of Sana’a in 2014, the capture of Sana’a was in
reality far less a rebellion against the state than a coup by
anti-Arab Spring forces within it. The Houthis would never have
succeeded in entering Sana'a in September 2014 were
it not for Saleh's loyalists in Yemen’s unreformed security
forces; the majority of the Yemeni Army as well as the fearsome
Republican Guard – armed for decades by Saudi Arabia and the United
States – stayed loyal to Saleh and rejected the authority of Hadi.
Expectedly, the ruling party, the General People’s Congress (GPC)
sided
with what became known especially in Arabic media as the
‘Houthi-Saleh forces’ in the coup against Hadi in 2014, decrying
the latter as a ‘traitor’.

After the coup
succeeded, it was Saleh who (perhaps somewhat surprisingly) conveyed
to his loyalists the necessity to subsume themselves to the new
official Houthi-fronted military and political command. Perhaps
believing that they will always return to him when the time came, it
is clear however that this plan backfired, and the events suggest
that in the years since the coup the Houthis may have consolidated
their position amongst the old Yemeni security forces to the extent
that their authority outstripped that of Saleh.

Yet Saudi Arabia
and the UAE could also be said to have unwittingly aided in the
execution of Saleh, via the unlikely executioner of the Houthis. In
recent months Saudi’s new effective ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed
Bin Salman, had effectively adopted the UAE position of supporting
Saleh loyalists instead of President Hadi, and in recent weeks
pursued a new strategy of attempting to wean Saleh off from the
Houthis in return for Saudi support for his (or rather, his son’s)
return to power. Previously, Saudi Arabia had been effectively allied
with the various forces grouped within the anti-Houthi/Saleh Popular
Resistance, prominently including unlikely allies such as the Yemeni
Muslim Brotherhood branch, the Islah party, and the Yemeni
Socialist Party. Power-hungry as always, Saleh clearly could not
resist the offer and in another one of his trademark U-turns,
betrayed the Houthis. Surprisingly, however, the coup-master did not
play his cards right and failed in the planning of the execution of
his newest coup; his loyalists were not well-positioned in Sana’a
at the time of his announcement, and the Houthis pre-emptively
struck.

Saudi
folly

The whole Yemeni
crisis can in the first degree be seen as a confluence of Saudi
decisions. To start with, Saudi Arabia safeguarded Ali Abdullah Saleh
with immunity as part of the GCC-initiative that sought to pacify the
Yemeni revolution. Indeed, as well as keeping Saleh’s ruling party
in power and his relatives
and loyalists in place across the military and security forces, the
GCC initiative even
preserved Saleh personally as the head of the General People’s
Congress, creating a bizarre scenario whereby his successor from the
same party, President Abd-Rabbo Mansur Hadi, belonged to a party
still headed by the dictator he replaced.

Between 2013-14 Saudi Arabia would even ally with the Houthis

Not only did
Saudi policy set the groundwork for Saleh’s inevitable return and
marginalise demands to either dismantle or radically reform state
institutions, but between 2013-14 Saudi Arabia would even
ally with the Houthis as a counterweight to the Yemeni Muslim
Brotherhood branch, the Islah party, which became increasingly
influential within the transitional government and political setting.
Thus, far from a proxy conflict, Saudi Arabia and Iran were at that
point supporting
the same forces.

This did not mean that Saudi Arabia
ideally wanted the Houthis in Sana’a, but it did mean that a Houthi
alliance with the counter-revolutionary forces of ‘stability’
represented in the Yemeni ‘deep state’ was seen as a lesser evil
to the increasing reliance by President Hadi on the Islah – as
well as combatting the unprecedented open democratic space which had
opened for civil movements within the transitional setting. Iran
similarly
enticed Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh, Saleh’s son who had been
effectively exiled by Hadi as Yemen’s ambassador to the UAE and
effective leader of Yemen’s feared Republican Guard, to not stand
in the way of the Houthis in exchange for recognising a return to
influence in Yemen.

Indeed, the
majority of Houthi weapons had
been supplied by Saudi Arabia and the United States to the Yemeni
Army under Saleh – entire stockpiles which were then opened to the
Houthis. In their drive to take the country – a process which
almost culminated during the near-capture of Aden in 2014 – the
Houthis would fight alongside the same army and Republican Guard
units which killed hundreds of Yemeni revolutionaries in 2011.
Crucial offensives by the Houthi-Saleh coalition were in fact
dominated not by the ‘Houthis’, but by
these loyalists. In their subsequent drive across the country
after the coup, the Houthi-Saleh coalition led by the fearsome
Republican Guard would rain misery on anti-Saleh sites of resistance
such as Taiz
(which they continue to besiege to this day), Aden and elsewhere.
Indeed, whilst Saudi Arabia expectedly condemned the coup against the
GCC Initiative-derived legitimate government of Abd Rabbu Hadi, the
signals from Riyadh at the time were that Saudi Arabia was willing
to acquiesce to the new arrangement of the Saleh-Houthi coalition
in power, at least in the short term. Meanwhile, a far cry from its
support of what it called the ‘legitimate’ Syrian president Assad
and his family’s four-decade rule, Iran supported
the “legitimate uprising” and Saleh-led coup against Hadi, in
power since 2012.

With the death of
King Abdullah in January 2015 and the ascension of the significantly
more anti-Iran King Salman, Saudi policy would be completely
reversed. Ironically, for the first time during the Arab Spring Saudi
Arabia would take the lead in a decisive intervention on the side of
Arab Spring revolutionary forces, fighting the onslaught of the
Houthis and Saleh’s loyalists in the Yemeni Army and aligning with
unlikely allies such as the Islah and Yemen’s southern
socialists. The poignant image of Saudi bombing of Republican
Guard headquarters or even
the house of their erstwhile former ally Saleh, pointed to this
radical reversal in policy under Salman. Unfortunately however, even
this rare occasion of Saudi intervention on the ‘right’ side of
the Arab Spring was nullified by the massive civilian casualties and
humanitarian
disaster inflicted by Saudi’s brutal military campaign, which
would soon
outstrip the deaths caused by the Saleh-Houthis forces. Saudi’s
policy in Yemen, in short, has been folly from start to finish; both
when siding with Saleh’s counter-revolutionary loyalists and even
when opposing them.

Echoes
of Egypt

Whilst commonly
being miscategorised as a ‘Houthi rebel takeover’, the Houthis
thus presented an alternative front for the return of old regime
interests under a new image – similar (though not identical) to the
front presented by the Tamarod (‘insurrection’) movement
for the military coup in Egypt. Here as with the Houthi movement, the
Tamarod movement along with the military-backed media
presented the movement as a ‘rectification’ of the path of
January 25th revolution which had been ‘hijacked’ by
the Muslim Brotherhood. Again, similarly to the “Death to America”
slogans which became prominent during the Houthi rise to power in
2014, the military-backed Tamarod movement had similarly
adopted an anti-US line as part of its official campaign (its logo
was the burning of a US flag) – accusing Morsi of being a US
stooge. Loyalists of the old Mubarak regime accepted the necessity of
this revised rhetoric. In reality of course, this was merely a
smokescreen for a vicious counter-revolution launched by the military
against the January 25th forces, a reality which would
eventually emerge into the open with explicit public and media
condemnations of the January 25th revolution once the
military regime had consolidated itself (after a period of expected
diplomatic criticisms, with western backing).

The immediate aftermath of the coup saw a continuation of US drone strikes with “no discernible reaction” from the Houthis

Meanwhile, the
immediate aftermath of the coup in Sana’a would see Houthi
officials declare that they want a “good relationship” with
the United States based on mutual respect (any implication of a
rejectionist boycott implied by the ‘Death to America’ was
rebuffed as “just
a slogan”), engage in diplomatic
talks with the US, and even enjoy intelligence
coordination against Al-Qaeda. Indeed, the immediate aftermath of
the coup saw a continuation of US drone strikes with “no
discernible reaction” from the Houthis (indeed, even after the
start of the US-backed Saudi-led intervention, the Houthis did
not reject US airstrikes against Al-Qaeda outright, declaring
only that they should be carried out mainly in coordination with them
and not the Saudi-backed Hadi government). The US meanwhile has
repeatedly criticised
the Saudi intervention in the country and urged a political
solution with the Houthi-Saleh forces – contradictorily even whilst
facilitating the military campaign and selling the country arms.

The
‘new
entrants’
of the post–Arab
Spring state

However, unlike
the case with the myriad of liberal and leftist groups grouped within
Tamarod (and the post-Morsi ‘civilian’ transitional
government) on the one hand and the military ‘deep state’ on the
other – whereby the former’s influence was largely swatted away by
the military within a short space of time, the Houthi alliance with
Saleh’s loyalists constituted much more of an amalgamation of the
two forces, not dissimilar to the increasing amalgamation between
Hezbollah and the Lebanese state in Lebanon or the Shia Islamist
Popular Mobilisation Units and the central government in Iraq. The
consistent theme of such amalgamations was the reinvention of
Iranian-backed Shia Islamists from excluded targets and opponents of
the so-called ‘war on terror’ to active engagers and proponents
of it. The reliance by the old regimes on previous ‘pariah’
sub-state militias was justified in the name of a renewed ‘war on
terror’ targeting the Sunni Islamist forces which emerged in the
post-Arab Spring (both ‘moderate’ such as the Muslim Brotherhood
and ‘extreme’ such as ISIS).

In reality, this
amalgamation resulted in both a degree of ‘moderation’ of the
insurgent forces entering the state – making them willing to enter
the realm of ‘pragmatic’ diplomatic dealings with
previously-condemned foes – as well as a degree of ‘radicalisation’
of the rhetoric of existing regimes – entailing their adoption of
populist criticisms of ‘imperialist’ powers they had long avoided
condemning. Thus both previous and current western allies (both past
such as Yemen’s
Saleh and present such as the Egyptian
military) would increasingly adopt criticisms of the west, whilst
meeting them from the other direction, the ‘new entrants’ (the
sub-state forces now increasingly relied-upon to prop up the besieged
state) quietly accepted practical collaboration with both
western-backed regimes and the west. In short, the new ‘stabilising’
post-Arab Spring arrangement required a formula whereby a historical
‘principled’ reluctance to deal with imperialist powers (quietly
supporting counter-revolutionary regimes despite publicly condemning
them) and their regional ‘lackeys’ was shedded, whilst a previous
reluctance to rhetorically condemn allied ‘imperialist’ powers
(portrayed as the cause of the upheaval by virtue of such
‘interfering’ condemnations) was abandoned.

Thus the likes of
Hezbollah would be hosted
by the Israeli-backed Al-Sisi regime after years of being condemned
by the Egyptian government as an extremist movement (and condemning
Egypt in the opposite direction as an ‘Israeli puppet’), and
Egypt would refuse
to follow the Saudi line in branding Hezbollah a ‘terrorist’
organisation. In other domains, Hezbollah would even participate
alongside US operations inside both Lebanon
and Syria.
The reality that sectarianism rather than ‘revolutionary’ or
‘anti-imperialist’ politics served clearly as the driving policy
would be evidenced in the support groups such as Hezbollah provided
to the US-installed government in Baghdad – which for years had
fought and killed thousands of anti-occupation insurgents (both Sunni
and Shia) – as well as more symbolic actions; thus Hebzollah would
poignantly host the likes of Ahmed Chalabi, known as the architect of
the ‘false dossier’ inviting the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, in
a conference in
Beirut – whilst the Houthis would routinely praise the former
‘US collaborator’ Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Saudi
Arabia’s
Arab Spring policy: from
Abdullah to Salman to Muhammed Bin Salman

Saudi Arabia’s general hostility to the Arab Spring nevertheless saw its regional popularity plummet to unprecedented lows 

Saudi Arabia’s
policy towards the Arab Spring could be surmised as lying between the
two poles of general support as represented by Qatar, and total
opposition as represented by the UAE. The predominant part of Saudi
policy towards the Arab Spring as established under King Abdullah
could be seen to have been aimed first and foremost at weakening
anti-status quo Sunni Islamist forces that found a popular
constituency within the monarchy, forces such as the Muslim
Brotherhood, and indeed Saudi policy entailed even aligning with
Iranian proxies in certain domains as a lesser evil in pursuit of
this aim. Nonetheless, King Abdullah recognised the need to support
aspects of the uprisings in some capacity to avoid increasing
domestic disquiet, though he did so whilst recognising a division of
influence with Iran (thus Iran would be left by Saudi to take free
reign in Iraq, its geopolitical ‘backyard’, in exchange for the
expectation of having a free hand in Bahrain; meanwhile Yemen and
Syria would see partial commitment from Iran to the Houthis and Saudi
to the rebels).

Yet Saudi
Arabia’s general hostility to the Arab Spring nevertheless saw its
regional popularity plummet to unprecedented lows (unilaterally
amongst Arab Spring Egyptians, Syrians and Yemenis), a reality which
Salman sought to somewhat address. Thus whilst Saudi media under
Abdullah would portray the Arab Spring in general terms as a Fitna
or dangerous ‘strife’ to be avoided, under Salman Saudi Arabia
would be portrayed as a ‘protector’ of the uprisings.

Saudi policy and
priorities were considerably reversed under Salman. Thus Saudi Arabia
would provide military support to the armed militias of the Islah
in Yemen – a scenario unthinkable under Abdullah – as well as
Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups such as Faylaq al-Sham (and even the
Qatari-backed Ahrar al-Sham) which Saudi had long opposed arming in
Syria. By contrast, such groups were designated as ‘terrorist’
organisations by Jordan
and the UAE,
which along with Egypt would
support Russia’s military intervention on the side of Assad
(and effectively Iranian militias) in 2015. Saudi relations with
traditional allies such as Egypt,
Lebanon
and even the UAE
deteriorated under Salman, with relations significantly improving on
the other hand with Qatar and Turkey.

The events of the
past few months however have demonstrated a shocking reversal from
the foreign policy direction established under Salman, as symbolised
in particular with the crisis with Qatar. Whilst initially
unexplainable to many observers, this was eventually explained by
what was described as a ‘palace coup’ by Mohammed Bin Salman,
months before the purge of rival power centres that would take place.
From the early signs so far, it would appear that the approach
Mohammed bin Salman is attempting to undertake is a radical
combination between the two approaches, in what can perhaps be
described as ‘purest’ and most unapologetic adoption of an
anti-Arab Spring Saudi policy and the closet yet to the UAE approach.

Giving up any
necessary pretences to undermine ‘stability’ (that is, support
some of the Arab Spring revolutionary forces in such places as Syria
and Yemen), bin Salman seemingly expects Iran to similarly reign in
its ‘disruptive’ expansionist activities in return for Saudi
Arabia giving up its support to anti-Iranian Arab Spring forces (such
as arms to the Syrian rebels and the Yemeni Resistance, and
diplomatic criticisms of the Iraqi government). To put it simply,
whilst Abdullah was somewhat acquiescent to the expansion of
regime-aligned (Iranian-backed) Shia Islamists at the expense of
pro-Arab Spring Sunni Islamists, and Salman to the opposite
direction, Muhammed bin Salman is attempting to take a hard line
against both Sunni Islamist and Shia Islamist forces. After years of
being urged to do so by the UAE, Saudi Arabia is now back
to supporting Saleh’s forces (led by his son, Ahmed), a policy
which had
been rejected under Salman.

Saudi Arabia may find that it cannot turn the time back

In this
‘reinvigorated’ confrontation with Iran, Bin Salman’s Saudi
hopes to rely on the backing of Donald Trump’s administration (and
perhaps covertly, Israel), which has given off signals that it will
attempt to contain Iran after years of accepted (and in certain
domains, arguably facilitated) Iranian expansion under Obama.
However, whilst the signs from Israel have been a consistent
rejection of western normalisation with Iran since the Obama years
(whilst having initially quietly acquiesced to Iranian expansionism
in Syria, seeing it as fomenting a distractive sectarian war) and as
a precursor to increased western pressure on finding a peace
settlement with the Palestinians in a new ‘normalised’ Middle
East (whereby Israel has routinely been reluctant to arrive at peace
treaties even with pliable neighbours, such as Egypt, Jordan and
Syria – preferring to maintain a scapegoating image of ‘hostile
neighbours’), the US policy is yet to be seen – with Trump’s
statements masking an alarming reality of practical
US support for Iranian expansion in Syria, and even explicit
praise for pro-Iran proxies in Iraq.

The UAE
preference in Yemen has been to back Ahmed Abdullah Saleh, but in
lieu of Saudi approval till recently, it has been wary of practically
doing so. Instead, it has found allies in the secular (and
anti-Islah) forces represented in the Southern secessionist
movement of the old socialist South Yemen, and has focussed its
efforts on targeting the Islah and other Sunni Islamists.
This, however, may not succeed; simply speaking Saudi Arabia may find
that it cannot turn the time back, and that the ‘original’
military and security apparatuses of regimes like Saleh’s and
Assad’s are no longer strong enough to stand without the propping
up of Iran’s Shia Islamists (this however is certainly far more the
case for Assad than Saleh).

It is thus likely
that Bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia will have to find itself again
choosing between whether it would prefer to back Sunni Islamists
represented in the revolutionary forces, or acquiesce to the
expansion of Iran’s Shia Islamists. With the anti-democratic and
anti-Arab Spring impulse of Bin Salman appearing even stronger than
that of Abdullah, it is not unlikely that they come to accept the
latter; indeed, signs which have emerged so far are that Saudi Arabia may
effectively end any resistance (partial and lacking as it was) to
Iranian domination in Syria and Iraq, but may hope to test its luck
with Saleh’s loyalists in Yemen. Ultimately, the stage in the
short-term is set for a confrontation between Saleh’s loyalists
(now headed by a vengeance-promising Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh) and
the Houthis, in which Saudi military support for the former –
depending on how many Saleh loyalists abandon the Houthis and return
to the son’s side – may be expected.

Ultimately in
perhaps the greatest irony of all, the dream of thousands of Yemeni
revolutionaries of Saleh being brought to some justice was achieved
by one half of that counter-revolutionary alliance he had forged
against Yemen’s Arab Spring.