Pentagon
© David B. Gleason/commons.wikimedia.org
The head of the U.S. Department of Defense, James Mattis, announced during his visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) that he was ready to make an effort to regulate the Yemeni military conflict through negotiations. "We will work with our allies, with our partners to try to get it to the negotiating table holding by the U.N.", Mattis said.

It was a routine statement of any senior politician but It was made by "Mad Dog" Mattis and It looked like absolute insincerity or military deception. Actually, he was the one who sent recently to the White House a request to lift restrictions on the military support of the Arabic coalition which is under Saudi Arabia's leadership.

This coalition is making war against the Supreme Revolutionary Committee, which is formed by Shia-Yemeni military group "Ansar Allah" (known as Houthis movement) and the army that remained loyal to the former president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh. The base of the military coalition supports the troops of president Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, who was deposed in January 2015 but kept his power formally, and it consists of KSA, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait that are supported by Egypt, Sudan, Morocco and Jordan. Riyadh asked Pakistan to help but got a refusal.

Mattis' peacekeeping statements sound very awkward, especially, when Donald Trump's administration started again to provide a serious military aid to the Saudis in Yemen. Barack Obama sharply decreased his help in his time because the troops of KSA and their allies were constantly blamed for killing innocent civilians. The State department of the U.S. approved the urgent sale of guided munitions at the price of 390 million of dollars to Saudi Arabia. The U.S. gives the coalition the intelligence data and unmanned aircrafts. There are also talks about the US force participation in ground operations.

The main aim of the US non-direct participation in the Yemeni civil war is still oppose to Iran, which is called " terrorist state № 1" by president Donald Trump. Teheran supports the Houthis who have been successfully opposing the invaders so far. It should be said that Washington has always set an official goal to fight against "Al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula" and tried to avoid a fight with the Houthis.

And now, the U.S. has "the moment of truth" in this conflict: they have to make a decision how they need to participate in this war. The Saudi coalition concentrates its forces to conduct the second phase of the operation "Golden spear" that was started on January 6 , 2017 in order to clean the south shore from the Houthis. Now, the main goal is the port Hodeda situated on the Red Sea and restrained by the troops of the Houthis and the supporters of president Saleh. If the attack succeeds, the rebels will lose the last marine supply, which will make them surrender according to the allied forces and American advisers' opinion. The coalition has already deployed motorized infantry brigades to the North (Midi) and South (Al Cook) from Hodeda that were formed and trained by trainers from UAE. These brigades must cut the North and South accesses to it before the attack starts.

However, their military success is not still great. They stuck in fight in the distance of 150 km (North) and 120 km (South) from the main aim of the operation. It is noteworthy to say that the brigade "Mocha's sons" that acts in the region of Al Cook in the direction of the port Mocha was formed and trained by Emirates advisers in African Eritrea, in a military base at the port Aseb. Officially, Eritrea does not participate in the war.

The Houthis are strengthening their positions and they announce that they are ready to fight till the end. Actually, they do not have any choice. 70% of food, fuel, humanitarian supply comes through the port Hodeda into the country. If the port stops its work, it can provoke famine in at least five provinces: Hodeda, Lahij, Taiz, Al Bayda, Mahwit. The resistance of the rebels is not going down and the operation "Golden spear" is pulling back. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi persistently require more help and, especially, the US Special Forces, heavy artillery and attack aircraft from Washington to take part in an attack on Hodeda. They cannot deal with this task on their own taking because the port has a dense construction and the rival has high motivation. Humanitarian organizations worry that there will be a great number of causalities within innocent citizens in case the attack happens.

President of Yemen Hadi said a month ago that there would be no negotiations with the Houthis until the port Hodeda got conquered. General Mattis who started to talk about a peaceful solution of the conflict said several times that Teheran supporting the Houthis is the main aim of the American army in the Middle East. In fact, he absolutely supports the US direct participation in the Yemeni war. It is obvious that his peaceful rhetoric hides the real aim of his visit to Saudi Arabia, which is to agree the positions on the military solution of "Yemeni question" with Riyadh.