Alwaght- The Yemen war is growing severely painful for the aggressors, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. As the costs of the conflict on the Saudi and the Emirati economies rises and as the rights groups call for blacklisting the two allies as war criminal, the aggressive countries are facing the serious reality that Ansarullah power on the battleground is increasing, transforming the equations of the war to the aggressors’ detriment.
Now the heartland of the Saudi and Emirati territories is within range of the Yemeni missiles and drones, making the rulers of the two countries feel the war conditions more tangibly. On Saturday, Yemen’s Al-Massira news channel, citing Yemen’s drone units command, reported that Samaad-3 drones launched missile strikes at the Dubai International Airport a day before. The Yemeni air force, responding to the Arab coalition’s air raids and killing hundreds of the civilians for the past four months, on August 27 attacked the UAE 's Dubai airport with several missiles. The attacks on the airport come while the Yemeni forces on July 26 had launched a similar attack on the Abu Dhabi airport. In the same period, the news reports talked of the Yemeni navy’s operations against a number of Saudi coastal guard’s boats on the coasts of the port city of Jizan, inflicting serious damages on them.
The fragile economies and strong Yemeni blows
The Yemeni missile forces’ strikes against the Saudi oil giant Aramco’s installations in Riyadh and the Dubai airport, the aggressor's lifelines, signal a smart choice of the target by the Yemenis to punish Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. As a result of the attacks, the Reuters news agency reported, the Dubai housing prices witnessed a 15 percent decline compared to late 2014 as the foreign investors begin to show less interest in investment and the foreign property owners flee the country for the fear of a crisis. The same report by the news agency shows that the stock markets in the Arab emirate performed the worst in the region since the beginning of the year, falling 15 percent. The fall in the arrival of foreign tourists to the UAE is the key factor behind the looming recession whose continuation can deal a fatal blow to the largely fragile economy of the UAE.
The spokesman to the Yemen army has recently warned that if Abu Dhabi’s assistance to the Saudi forces’ aggression continues, the Arab state’s leaders should expect even more effective strikes on their territories by the Yemeni ballistic missiles and drones. He also sent a message for the foreign investors telling them as long as the anti-Yemeni aggression sustains, the UAE will not be safe.
Tracking the course of the Ansarullah and the army military advances over the four years of war apparently demonstrates the practicality of Yemen’s threats. When it comes to the missile power, the Ansarullah rockets’ range has now grown long enough to strike vital economic and military sites across Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In early March, Ansarullah unveiled Burkan-2 missile whose features took aback the foreign observes and frightened the coalition leaders. The new projectile’s range reaches 1,400 kilometers, meaning it has the capability to cover nearly 80 percent of the Saudi territories. On September 2, 2016, the Yemeni army had unveiled Burkan-1, an 8-ton, 12-meter-long missile with a range of 800 kilometers. The country’s missile progression is so fast that in the near future Yemen can produce pinpoint missiles. Beside the advances in the rocket industry, the Yemenis are thriving in military drones production with long-range flight capabilities. The prominent one is Samaad-3 combat drone which has expanded the Yemeni forces’ potentials to respond to the Saudi-Emirati coalition’s hostilities.
Allegations of Iranian military support to Ansarullah
As it was made clear, Yemen’s military progress, particular in missiles and combat drones industry, has been extraordinarily surprising to the international observers. Over the years of conflict, Ansarullah has shown great potentials to develop militarily, something confirming that Yemen is independently developing its missile power. Foreign help is very unlikely as Yemen has been under the coalition’s air, sea, and land blockade since the day the air campaign started in March 2015. Sources familiar with Yemen's developments suggest that the old missiles underwent a repurposing process with the Yemeni experts introducing essential changes to the surface-to-air missiles to make them surface-to-surface.
The SAM-2 missiles at best reached 45-50 kilometers. But the Yemenis enhanced their range to 100 kilometers. Then Qaher-1, with an over 200-kilometer range, was unveiled, that are able to reach the Saudi territory. Qaher M-2 followed the Qaher-1, reaching 400 kilometers. Then ensued Badr-1, the first generation of solid fuel-powered missiles made in Yemen and unveiled in March this year.
But whenever the Saudis and Emiratis receive hard blows from Ansarullah and the army, they resort to the now-threadbare accusation of Iran’s military support to Yemen. The anti-Iranian charges come while, as the international aid organizations Western backers of the Arab alliance put it, the watertight siege makes hard of even food and medicine entry to the country. The analysts argue that the root of the coalition’s allegations should be sought in an attempt to justify the failure in the war against the poorest and least-armed Arab nation. They add that the Yemen war destroyed the image of the Riyadh and Abu Dhabi they sought to draw over the past years through their media propaganda and huge weapons purchases. The Yemen war, in fact, divulged to all the allies’ fundamental military weakness.
Seeking to cover this, the Saudi and Emirati rulers try to say that their opponent is not Yemen, an impoverished county, but Iran, a regional power, which is a bitter acknowledgment of Iran’s military strength in the region.
