Yemen’s Civil War Is Spilling Deeper Into the Gulf Region

Yemen’s four-year civil war is spilling deeper into the oil-rich Persian Gulf region. Saudi Arabia, with its Sunni majority, intervened to support the government of President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi; Iran, which has a Shiite majority, aids the Houthi rebels who took control of the capital, Sana’a, and other cities in 2015. Now a strike by the Yemeni rebels more than 400 miles inside Saudi Arabia has raised the prospect that Iran might be helping to arm them.

The Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for a May 14 drone attack on two pumping stations along Saudi Arabia’s cross-country oil pipeline. The Saudi government said the attack was ordered by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. The kingdom sees various militias, including the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, as arms of the Revolutionary Guard, which has been designated a terrorist organization by U.S. President Donald Trump. The Houthis are not known to have the capacity to build sophisticated drones that can fly long distances.