WASHINGTON – Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen stepped up drone and missile attacks on Saudi Arabia last month, employing increasingly sophisticated drones and missiles to target targets across the kingdom, defense officials and experts say.
The Houthis launched more than 40 drones and missiles in Saudi Arabia in February alone, a senior US defense official told NBC News.
“We are certainly aware of a worrying increase in Houthi attacks across the border from a variety of systems, including cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles),” said the defense official.
The attacks emphasize the Houthis’ ability to attack distant targets in Saudi Arabia over hundreds of kilometers, including the center of the kingdom’s oil industry.
But unlike a devastating drone and a cruise missile attack in September 2019 that destroyed two crucial oil plants, Saudi Arabia managed to bring down many of the oncoming drones and missiles.
In their last attack on Saudi Arabia on Sunday, Houthi forces said they had launched a medium-range Zulfiqar missile and 10 armed drones in the eastern cities of Ras Tanura and Dammam, home to major oil facilities, and seven short-range Badr missiles and four drones on targets in the south.
As a result of the growing air threat, the US military has increased assistance to the Saudis, sharing intelligence to help them locate and intercept drones loaded with explosives and a series of ballistic and cruise missiles, defense officials said.
Saudi Arabia said Sunday’s attacks did not cause casualties or major damage to the country’s oil facilities.
Although the Saudis have so far managed to thwart recent attacks, there have been problems. On February 11, Houthi rockets hit Abha International Airport in southwest Saudi Arabia, causing a civilian plane to fire, although no one was injured.
After the September 2019 attack that disrupted more than half of the kingdom’s oil production for days, the United States provided Patriot missile defense batteries to Saudi Arabia, as well as a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system for helping Riyadh to defend itself from Houthi threatens.
Anti-missile systems, however, are designed to track and hit missiles from a higher altitude, and low-flying drones provide a more challenging target, especially when launched in larger numbers. The Saudis began to use US-made F-15 fighters armed with missiles to pursue the drones, according to defense officials and regional experts.
The Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
Iranian weapons and advice
The scale and scope of the Houthi attacks illustrate how the rebels have progressed as a fighting force since the start of the Yemen war in 2015, and how much they have benefited from Iranian weapons and councils, according to regional analysts and UN experts.
A January UN report said there was growing evidence that Iran was supplying weapons and components to the Houthi rebels through smuggling routes at sea.
“A growing body of evidence suggests that individuals or entities in the Islamic Republic of Iran supply significant volumes of weapons and components to the Houthis,” said the UN panel of experts.
Previous UN reports found that ballistic missiles fired by the Houthis were manufactured by Iran, and that the drones used by the Houthis were almost identical in design and capability to those produced by Iran.
The Houthis have proved adept at placing Iran-supplied components – including drone engines, rocket engines and electronics – for use in making missiles and drones at local factories, said Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah officials also helped in the effort, he said.
“The Houthis with Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah support have managed to gather some quite surprising attack capabilities,” said Knights, whose research focused on Iranian and Houthi military capabilities.
“They have raised their production to a level where they can launch many more of these systems. They have reached technical maturity in their local production systems,” said Knights.
Iran has repeatedly denied having armed Houthi forces. Iran’s UN mission did not respond to a request for comment.
Iran is the only country that has recognized Houthi forces as the Yemeni government, and its envoy to the rebels, Hassan Irloo, has been described by the State Department as an officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The war in Yemen, which broke out in 2015, pits Houthi Shiites in line with Iran against a Saudi coalition led by Sunni Muslim states who want to see the internationally recognized government restored to power. The civil war has also become a proxy conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
The Houthi air strikes on Saudi Arabia were combined with a ground offensive in Yemen around Marib, the last northern stronghold of the internationally recognized Yemeni government. UN officials have warned that Marib’s downfall could displace hundreds of thousands of Yemenis, aggravating what humanitarian agencies call the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
The Houthi attack on Marib and the rocket fire in Saudi Arabia coincide with a renewed international effort to try to negotiate a peace deal with a US envoy, Tim Lenderking, ending negotiations in the region this week. Lenderking spent extra time in the region trying to secure a ceasefire and “although there is some promising progress, more commitment from the parties is needed,” the State Department said on Thursday. Lenderking said that a good ceasefire proposal was now in front of the Houthi rebels, according to Arab News.
The United States, along with France, Germany, Italy and Britain on Thursday condemned the Houthi offensive in Marib and the “great escalation of attacks that the Houthis conducted and claimed against Saudi Arabia,” the governments said in a statement in the statement. Thursday.
The Houthis’ military impulse appears to be aimed at gaining momentum before any possible peace talks and exploring friction between the Biden government and the Saudis, said Adel Abdel Ghafar, a researcher at the Brookings Doha Center.
“The Houthis were encouraged by the Biden government’s decision not to support the Saudi-led war in Yemen,” said Ghafar, and are trying to put themselves “in a stronger position as soon as negotiations begin to end the war.”
President Joe Biden cut back on support for Saudi Arabia’s military campaign in Yemen shortly after taking office, and his government suspended the designation of a terrorist against the Houthi rebels, saying that this was hampering the delivery of emergency aid to a country on the edge of hungry. For years, Democrats in Congress have called for an end to US support for Saudi-led war, citing air strikes with US-made bombs that inflicted heavy casualties on civilians.
But critics have accused the Biden government of sending the wrong signal to the Houthis and that the rebels have little incentive to make concessions.
“Pressing Riyadh while giving the Houthis a free pass has created an asymmetry that no astute diplomacy is capable of overcoming,” said Brad Bowman, a former national security policy adviser to Republican senators and now senior director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies think tank.
The Biden government condemned the Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia and recently announced new sanctions against two Houthi military leaders, promising to “keep the pressure” on the rebels.
Bowman argued that the government should ban the sending of weapons to Yemen, depriving Houthis of a constant supply of weapons.
“Blocking access to Iran’s main weapons and technology could increase the incentives for the Houthis to come to the negotiating table in good faith,” said Bowman.
Charlene Gubash reported from Cairo.