The war in Yemen has now gone regional:
Saudi Arabia’s King Salman said the military operation against the Houthis would not stop until Yemen was stable and secure. It will continue “until it achieves its goals for the Yemen people to achieve security,” he said.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi, meanwhile, endorsed the creation of a joint military force, saying the Arab world was at a crucial crossroad and facing unprecedented difficulties. “The challenges are grave,” Sisi told the Arab leaders, like Salman not mentioning Iran by name. “It is a huge responsibility, heavy and burdensome.”
A Houthi spokesman countered Saturday that Hadi was a “puppet” of the United States and Saudi Arabia. “Yemenis may not have great and strong weapons like Saudi Arabia and their allies, but they have strength, and faith in God will win this battle,” said Dhaif Allah Shami of the Houthi political office.
In Tehran, a government TV station reported that thousands of people took to the streets of Sana to voice their readiness to confront Saudi aggression. The station also reported Houthi militias moving toward the border of Saudi Arabia. A third night of airstrikes targeted military bases and air defense sites around Sana and destroyed stockpiles of weapons that the Houthi militia had seized, said Ahmed Hassan Asiri, a spokesman for coalition forces. There were also late-night reports of airstrikes on Sana’s civilian airport.
Yemen airspace remained exclusively under the control of the coalition, Asiri said, and the Houthis suffered “grave losses.” He said their capability is “weakening on a daily basis.” But he acknowledged that the Houthis were continuing a push toward the port city of Aden and were also mobilizing near the Saudi border.
As always, combined arms are the most effective. What appears to be happening so far is air forces versus ground forces, and the latter usually win as long as they can reach the enemy. But it appears that the Saudis are not confident that their ground forces will be sufficient to repel a Houthi invasion, otherwise they would not be looking for help from Egypt and other Arab countries.