Muscat Minaret of the Houthis.. Oman's neutrality and defending the militias' gains
English - Monday 07 February 2022 الساعة 08:56 am
Sana'a, NewsYemen, private:
Whenever the Sultanate of Oman realized that the Houthis were in a predicament and were crammed into a corner of international pressure and field defeats on the theater of operations, it brought Yemen's file back to the table of its hot issues in defense of the Houthis and not concern for the Yemenis.
During the years of war and the coup, Oman represented a minaret and a major support station for the Houthis, despite the Sultanate's claim to be impartial in dealing with the issue of the neighborhood and to stay at the same distance from everyone.
Oman was not satisfied with its complementary role to Tehran and its transformation into a transit point for Iranian military support to the Houthi camps, but also linked another wing with the State of Qatar, the generous financial supporter of the Houthis and the Brotherhood and the multiple Muscat cells that belong to political and social forces that met for a livelihood to work against the Arab coalition.
Recently, the Sultanate of Oman began to move secretly and publicly in an attempt to contain the success made by the Emirati diplomacy and mobilize international positions to create the content of a political effort to confront the Houthis’ tampering with the security and stability of the region, paralleling the military effort that the UAE recently accomplished in the field in coordination with the southern forces.
The Sultanate of Oman had stated its position rejecting the reclassification of the Houthi militia as an international terrorist group, with the justification that this designation, which the Biden administration canceled at the beginning of its missions, would complicate humanitarian efforts to reach those targeted with relief support, in addition to complicating the chances of a political solution, as the Muscat diplomacy alleges.
What is known is that the humanitarian support provided by Muscat to Yemen does not exceed the funding quotas for Brotherhood and Houthi cells and political and media groups that decided to take the Sultanate as a headquarters to practice extortion for the coalition.
While the Sultanate of Oman and Qatar are moving in international circles to market illusions of a political solution and warn of the dangers of not reaching the targeted segments of humanitarian support if the Houthi militias are classified as a terrorist organization, the American political assessment reached a conviction that the flow of relief cannot remain a Houthi card to blackmail the world.
In a local track, there is information about a great Omani effort made by Muscat under the slogan of containing the military escalation and persuading the local Yemeni parties to sit at the dialogue table within Omani mediation, while the reality says that the Sultanate moved to save the Houthis and give them time to overcome the Emirati intensification of military and political options.
The danger of the Omani move reveals the Sultanate’s identification with Tehran’s project by enabling the Houthis to control Ma’rib and beyond Ma’rib and expanding Iran’s gains in the hands of Abdul-Malik al-Houthi’s militias.
The Sultanate of Oman failed, or it can be asserted that it did not want the mission of its royal delegation to succeed, which visited Abdul-Malik al-Houthi last year to stop his attack on Marib and convince him to accept the Saudi initiative and to deal positively with the Biden administration’s dreamy messages at the time of creating a political victory that ends the war in Yemen.
The royal delegation returned from Sanaa carrying plastic bags containing a few raisins, almonds and honey. The delegation was photographed with gifts before boarding the plane, as if the intention of publishing such pictures shows that the visit was friendly and not an attempt to exploit Oman’s relations with Al-Houthi to persuade him to make concessions.
At that time, the Houthi forces were continuing to annihilate the geography of the Ma’rib governorate, but the current move will go towards keeping the areas south of Marib under the control of the militias, as these districts constitute a valuable gain for the Houthis who fought for 20 months to obtain it.
The Sultanate of Oman’s current move aims to prevent the Houthis from losing this geography in southern Marib, which constitutes the last door to control Marib’s oil wealth and its political and tribal symbolism, after the Emirati move with its allies in Shabwa and the western coast confused Houthi field accounts and removed the state of relaxation that the militias had reached in achieving military gains. On the army of legitimacy.
Oman did not raise its voice when it failed to prevent the Houthi advance towards Marib, despite the legitimate attempts by its leaders to persuade Muscat to play a role that would stop the Houthis scrambling to swallow what was left of Marib at the time. Iran's gains and the repetition of the Hodeidah model.
In the coming days, we will witness an increase in the voices of the Houthis’ progress as peace doves, with Houthi statements about the importance of negotiations as a gateway to reaching a settlement that ends the war and its tragedies, and the role of Oman and Iran, and linking this to indicators of an expected breakthrough in the negotiations of the Iranian nuclear file.
Investing in the successes achieved by the UAE in the field and in the diplomatic workspaces and ending the tampering of legitimacy through a serious move to restructure the tools of legitimacy and its leaders is the guarantee to thwart the Omani-Qatari move, which is betting on the penetrations of Muscat and Doha of the wings and factions of legitimacy and its infiltrated centers.
The Sultanate of Oman’s talk about peace perpetuates the reality of the Houthis’ military control in the field, and it will not be contrary to that, and any bet on those who smuggle missiles and Houthi drones that they will contribute to making a peaceful settlement in the country is stupidity and betrayal.
