WASHINGTON –The newly formed joint Arab military force under the leadership of Saudi Arabia could drag the U.S. into a conflict it doesn’t want, warn regional analysts.
As WND reported, Arab League recently agreed to a joint military force at Egypt’s Sharm el Sheikh, partly in response to what analysts say is a desire by the Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia, to be less dependent on the U.S. for its security.
The 22 Sunni Islamic countries that form the Arab League want to create their own version of NATO for Middle East regional conflicts against Islamic jihadists such as ISIS but also against the growing influence of Shiite Iran.
“The challenges facing our national Arab security are grave, and we have succeeded in diagnosing the reasons behind it,” Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi told the Arab League.
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Sisi said the gathering was “pumping the blood of hope in the arteries of Arab cooperation.”
Arab League action comes as the U.S. attempts to wrap up a nuclear agreement with Iran, a move that the Saudis and the Arab countries vehemently oppose, as does Israel.
The Saudi-led military coalition is designed to “unite a divided and apprehensive nation,” according to Middle East expert Madawi Al-Rasheed, who writes for Al-Monitor.
On the one hand, the Saudi kingdom is split domestically by liberal elements who want the government to control conservative religious constituencies and grant more personal freedoms.
“The Islamists, who demanded more civil and political rights, an elected government in a constitutional monarchy and accountability, have been put behind bars. There is no sign they will be released under the Saudi monarch,” Rasheed wrote in Al-Monitor.
“Such internal divisions have persisted and even became more obvious with the mass protests sweeping the Arab world,” she said. “They all, however, aspired toward defeating Iran and thwarting its expansion toward Arab lands. They were all disappointed with the unsuccessful efforts of the Saudi regime to depose (President) Bashar al-Assad of Syria.
Rasheed said the Saudi regime’s "failure to score a victory over Iran, coupled with the U.S.-Iranian rapprochement over the Iran’s nuclear program, is interpreted as a serious Saudi defeat."
"Hence, the war on Yemen promises to nourish an aggressive and unifying hyper-nationalism, at least in the short term," she said.
A victory over the Houthis, Rasheed said, would be important for domestic reasons but would save the Saudi leadership “from embarrassment over its complete failure to score victory over Iran in Syria and Iraq, and over Washington’s new policy to mend its ties with Iran and possibly lift sanctions.”
Concern among other regional observers, however, is that the joint Arab military coalition also could be used to launch future attacks against Iranian proxy groups in Yemen and elsewhere, and against Iran itself, dragging the U.S. into sectarian conflicts it doesn’t want.
It remains unknown how the military coalition will be implemented. It could be under a single command or a coalition of national units, with each country’s involvement being voluntary.
In addition to air power, the combined Arab countries could bring to bear more than 350,000 troops.
However, their combined forces and military hardware still would not equal the military capability of Iran.
The Saudis have attacked Houthi positions in Yemen with the help of Egypt and other members of the newly formed military alliance. The Saudis decided to initiate such attacks on the Houthis, who kicked out the U.S.-backed government of Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.
U.S. assistance for the joint Arab military coalition has been in the form of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
The consequence of Hadi’s ouster was to halt the U.S. counter-terrorism program aimed at Al-Qaida in the Arab Peninsula, or AQAP.
The creation of the military group isn’t a new idea but stems from a joint military command that was formed in the mid-1960s in what was referred to as the Pan-Arab period of nationalism. The Arab governments joined forces at that time against Israel, but the joint military command ended with the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
“It is the renewal of an old idea,” one regional source said. “This time, the level of seriousness looks higher, even if we do not know yet whether the outcome this time will be different than in the past.”
The Saudis mistrust of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also is a concern, with the joint Arab force posing a threat to the Jewish state. Also, Tel Aviv sees Shiite Iran, should it acquire nuclear weapons, as a threat to Israel's survival.
In recent days, the emergence of a new type of military command is aimed at the Houthis, based in northern Yemen and posing a threat to Saudi Arabia’s predominantly Shiite provinces where most of the Saudi kingdom’s oil production takes place. The Houthis also are moving further south into Yemen in Sunni-held territory where AQAP is based.
Because the Saudis have determined that the Houthis are a direct threat to the kingdom itself, Middle East sources say that the bombing of the Iranian-backed group’s positions will continue until it comes to the negotiating table.
The Houthis didn’t seek to overthrow the Hadi government but have sought more representation in the predominantly Sunni government. The Houthis constitute about a third of the country.
The Houthis have allied themselves with Yemen’s former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was forced to resign two years ago by the Saudis and replaced with Hadi at the beginning of the Arab Spring in 2010.
The concern now is that the Houthis could use captured Scud missiles that would threaten the strategically important strait – the Bab-el-Mandeb – which is some nine miles wide separating Yemen from Africa.
It is a strategic route for world shipping going into the Red Sea and access into the Mediterranean Sea.
If closed, ships would be forced to sail around South Africa to reach European and Western Hemisphere markets.
Analysts believe, however, that it would be difficult for the Houthis to shut down the Strait of Bab al-Mandeb. In addition, Iran would be opposed, since it sees greater strategic gain in reaching its nuclear agreement and would not want to do anything that would compromise its completion and the lifting of international economic sanctions.