The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey

The drums of war are beating again in Yemen.

A series of recent incidents suggests that both Iran and Saudi Arabia are more assertively supporting their Yemeni allies at the risk of shattering an informal four-year ceasefire in the kingdom’s war against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

The recent incidents stand in stark contrast to the kingdom's tacit outreach to Iran.

Saudi Arabia sent a delegation to this week’s funeral proceedings for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s assassinated supreme leader, enabled the indirect sale of five aging Boeing 777-200ERs to an Iranian airline, and proposed a post-war regional security architecture that would include Iran.

Moreover, Saudi Arabia, which intervened in Yemen in 2015 to counter Houthi military advances, has not closed the door on a negotiated resolution of the conflict.

“The political solution remains on the table; power-sharing, which could save (the Houthis) from destruction. The Houthis remain a Yemeni player with the right to be a partner in power, not to dominate it,” said Abdulrahman al-Rashed, a Saudi columnist who often reflects official Saudi thinking.

Fuelling the rising tensions are rival perceptions of windows of opportunity created by the failure of the US-Iranian memorandum that extended the Iran war ceasefire and created the basis for negotiations to end the war to address Iran’s support for its Arab partners, including the Houthis.

James discusses on CNBC prospects for the US-Iran negotiations and US President Donald Trump’s interview with the network.

Lebanon looms large as a grey swan that could run roughshod over US-Iranian negotiations to end the Iran war.

Lebanon looms large as a grey swan that could run roughshod over US-Iranian negotiations to end the Iran war.

Geography gives Iran a leg up in the struggle to determine the strategic Strait of Hormuz’s future and potentially with it the region’s balance of power.

Iran’s strategic advantage is rooted in the Marxist principle of possession is ownership.

As a result, tensions in the Strait are about who controls the Strait.

Widely diverging US and Iranian attitudes towards Iran’s nuclear programme are not just about preventing the Islamic Republic from acquiring nuclear weapons.

It’s also about perceptions of sovereignty and efforts by non-nuclear states, like Iran and Saudi Arabia, to level the playing field with the world’s core nuclear powers, the United States, Russia, China, Britain, and France, and perceived double standards built into the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) when it comes to haves and have-nots.

In contrast to Iran, Saudi Arabia, insisting on its right to enrich uranium, this year successfully negotiated a nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States that allows the kingdom to enrich without intrusive supervision by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), despite evidence over the years that it is creating some of the building blocks for a nuclear weapons programme.

Saudi Arabia’s nuclear focus serves various goals: diversifying its economy, reducing its dependence on fossil fuels, countering a potential future Iranian nuclear capability, and enhancing efforts to ensure that Saudi Arabia, rather than Iran, emerges as the Middle East’s long-term dominant power.

None of this is to ignore the fact that the Islamic Republic, at times, has worked to become a nuclear threshold state, if not to develop a nuclear weapon.

James discusses the US-Iran negotiations, the Middle East’s changing geopolitics, and Yemen on Radio Islam.

A Turkish-Saudi agreement to revive the Ottoman-era Hijaz Railway tells the story of geopolitical realignment in the wake of the wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, including the future of Iran’s relations with the Gulf monarchies.

The agreement is the tale of efforts to reduce regional dependence on the Strait of Hormuz, diverging Gulf attitudes towards cooperation with Israel, dashed US hopes of including Israel in a rail and shipping network that would connect the Gulf and India to Europe, diminished prospects for Saudi-Israeli diplomatic relations, Turkey’s evolving regional ambitions, and post-Bashar al-Assad Syria’s reintegration into regional dynamics.

The agreement is also indicative of a broader shift in the wake of the Iran war towards alternative export routes and hardened critical infrastructure that will impact the Gulf’s geopolitics.

The negotiations between the United States and Iran remain fragile with both contradicting the other on what may or may not have been agreed. James discusses the negotiations’ prospects on TRT World.

It’s time to rethink policy towards Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

The need to think outside of the box has become more urgent with Middle Eastern states and the international community seeking alternative transport routes to reduce dependence on the Strait of Hormuz through which 20 per cent of the world’s oil flows in peacetime.’

Rethinking policy isn’t that far-fetched given the United Arab Emirates and Qatar’s efforts to cut deals with Iran to ensure that the Islamic Republic does not attack their energy and other infrastructure if hostilities in the Iran war erupt again.

It’s also not a big leap from cutting deals with Yemen to rethinking attitudes towards the Houthis, given that they de facto govern a state in a part of Yemen, albeit ruthlessly.