The assassination of former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh follows a strain in the opportunistic cooperation between his forces and the Houthis.
Iranian media report, but the UAE denies, that the Houthis fired a missile toward Abu Dhabi over the weekend in response to a Saudi-brokered deal to return former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to power; Saleh is killed Dec. 4.
By Bart Marcois, OpsLens: “The death of Ali Abdullah Saleh, president of Yemen for over 30 years, comes as a great shock. Saleh once said that ruling the country was “like dancing on the heads of snakes.”
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The Saudi-led coalition pounded Houthi positions in Yemen’s capital Sanaa before dawn today after the rebels killed former President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Monday. Saleh, who reigned for 33 years, had been allied with the Iran-backed Houthis against the UN-recognized government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi but the coalition collapsed in recent days, prompting Saleh to reach out to the Saudis. Houthi fighters fired a rocket-propelled grenade at Saleh’s vehicle south of Sanaa before shooting him dead. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, at least 125 people had been killed and 238 wounded as of Monday in six days of fighting between the Houthis and Saleh’s supporters. Read More
The Iranian-backed al Houthi movement has killed former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The Gulf States and the U.S. have sought to break Saleh's partnership with the al Houthis movement for some time, but Saleh’s killing will likely undermine the benefits of the fracturing of the al Houthi-Saleh coalition. It will likely shift the al Houthis further into the Iranian camp and give al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula an opportunity to gain ground and position itself as a service-provider and mediator.
Critical Threats Project research manager and lead analyst Katherine Zimmerman and al Qaeda analyst Maher Farrukh forecast that instability in northern Yemen will increase in the short-to-medium term due to infighting within Saleh's patronage network. The Hadi government and Saudi-led coalition will attempt to advance the frontline of the civil war to exploit this instability. The Gulf States may try to establish Saleh’s son as a replacement strongman, but this effort will not galvanize all or even most of the Saleh patronage network in the current environment. The U.S. must end its failed practice of outsourcing its Yemen policy to the Gulf States and confining its own actions to killing terrorists. It must instead take a leading role in driving negotiations toward a sustainable resolution of the conflict in Yemen and steering its coalition partners in this direction
Yemen's exiled president ordered troops to advance on Sanaa hours after his predecessor was killed by Huthi rebels, officials said, as heavy fighting continued in the capital. - Agence France-Presse
The son of Yemeni ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was killed by the armed Houthi movement after switching sides in the civil war, called for revenge against the Iran-aligned group on Tuesday, Saudi-owned al-Ekbariya TV quoted him as saying. - Reuters
Analysis: Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh dominated the political life of his country for close to four decades. He was president for 33 years and survived the 2011 upheavals that rocked the Arab world, stepping down after political negotiations while autocrats elsewhere were cast out or killed. - Washington Post
By Isaac Kfir, The Strategist (ASPI): “On 4 December, Houthi rebels in Yemen killed former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. A few days earlier, Saleh had ended his three-year-old alliance with the Houthis and sought to re-establish relations with Saudi Arabia.Saleh’s death is bound to complicate the ongoing crisis in Yemen.”