The UAE sees the US strikes as an opportunity to strengthen its influence in Yemen.

The United States is currently conducting one of its most ferocious air campaigns against Houthi military sites and weapons depots in northern Yemen, where Washington is supporting its ally Tel Aviv. The campaign has been accompanied by incoherent statements from the US regarding the ultimate objectives of the air campaign, with the exception of a single statement from the Assistant Secretary of Defense, which advocates for the goal of dismantling the Houthi group. The UAE is also making exceptional efforts to leverage America's surplus destructive power to further its faltering agenda and influence in Yemen.

The extent of the damage caused by the US strikes to the group's leadership and combat capabilities remains unclear. However, there is undoubtedly damage. These strikes are not blind, but rather based on information and a target bank, updated thanks to intelligence capabilities and information exchanged, perhaps within the framework of logistical cooperation with regional countries, particularly information provided during the air operations of the Coalition to Support Legitimacy.

These strikes coincide with an exceptional Emirati effort, outside the control of Yemen's weak legitimate authority, that has produced a logistical infrastructure that includes at least two airports: one on Abd al-Kuri Island in the Socotra Archipelago Governorate in the Indian Ocean, and the other on Mayun Island, located in the middle of the Bab al-Mandab Strait. These could serve as potential bases for long-term US air activity in the region.

It is no coincidence that the airports of Mayun and Abd al-Kuri were being equipped at the same time, at the end of February and the beginning of March of this year, to be ready for comprehensive military air activity, commensurate with the major and dangerous American escalation against the Houthi group. This allows observers to expect that Abu Dhabi—which, through its deputy ruler Tahnoun bin Zayed, offered investments in the United States in the White House, amounting to a trillion and a half dollars—may succeed in advancing the idea of a military partnership between the two countries in Yemen’s vital sovereign geographic area.

In the long term, the UAE's generous military investments in the geography of an independent, sovereign state, Yemen, and the allocation of a portion of these investments to the US vital sphere, aim to ensure the achievement of its objectives under the US umbrella. Specifically, these objectives include establishing a dominant geopolitical influence in Yemen's most vital locations, particularly in the Socotra Archipelago, and supporting its vision of transforming the Bab al-Mandab Strait into a joint international and regional sphere of influence. This is a plan clearly intended to be achieved not only at the expense of Yemeni sovereignty, but also at the expense of the very existence of the Yemeni state itself.

Under the weight of the abject failure of the Emirati project in Sudan, which represented one of the undeclared rounds of conflict with Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent, with Egypt, which is aligned with the Sudanese army, it appears that Abu Dhabi holds some important cards in southern Yemen in particular, which it seeks to use to achieve gains at the expense of Saudi Arabia. The separatist project dominates with its political and military tools, but with a heavy legacy of failure - which cannot be understood - represented by its inability to establish an administrative, service, economic, and livelihood model that can be supported by the people.

The UAE is desperate to push Yemen into a state of rampant chaos, reinforced by ready-made tools on the ground, and to impose a sovereign vacuum that would allow it to present its dangerous hostile options, including the implementation of the separatist project. This is a trade-off that may find understanding from the Trump administration, given the possibility of exploiting Yemeni sovereign sites for military and geostrategic purposes. This could find its way to implementation in light of the reckless directions of the new American policies, amidst this chaos, and the systematic empowerment of emergent political and military entities on the Yemeni scene, and their political projects that threaten the legal entity of the Republic of Yemen.

The US strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen were not of vital importance. It is sufficient to note that they targeted almost the same weapons that the United States was keen to place at the Houthis' disposal after they overthrew Sanaa on September 21, 2014. This fact belies Washington's claims that they were aimed at protecting maritime navigation.

US strikes on targets in Yemen, whether under former President Joe Biden or his successor, Trump, present the United States as a "bully" armed with enormous capabilities and broad international influence, seeking to achieve clearly hostile goals, the most important of which are weakening the region and supporting the Zionist genocide in Gaza.

The UAE, for its part, is attempting to channel some of its surplus superpower power into this thug's hands to support its goals in Yemen, which inevitably conflict with a UN-backed political process aimed at ending the war and coup, restoring the Yemeni state, and imposing its sovereign authority over the entire country.

(Arabic 21)