Iran Guards say Saudi Arabia won’t be able to contain Yemen’s Houthis

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warned on Thursday that Saudi Arabia will not be able to contain the Tehran-backed Houthis in Yemen as the rebels ramp up attacks on the kingdom.

“Saudi Arabia will certainly be unable to contain Yemen and Ansarullah or remain safe from their attacks,” Guards spokesman Hossein Mohebi told Defa Press, using another name for the Houthis.

“As we have seen in recent days, the more Saudi Arabia attacks, the more it is hit in return.”

Yemen last month became the latest front to open in the Middle East war that broke out on February 28 with US-Israeli strikes on Iran.

The Houthi attacks and their attempt to blockade Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea ports came after tit-for-tat strikes in early July following the arrival of an Iranian plane in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa.

Yemen has been embroiled in more than a decade of war and the latest fighting upended a 2022 truce with the Saudi-backed internationally-recognised government.

This week, a Yemeni minister told AFP that the Houthi rebels were plotting to seize land along the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which would allow them to further threaten the vital shipping artery.

Three Houthi military sources and a spokesman for the Yemeni government forces battling them near the waterway also told AFP the rebels are planning to advance south from their current territory.