New Emirati-Israeli Adventure in Yemen Could End up Costly to Abu Dhabi

Recently, Yemen Press Agency, citing informed sources, reported about a new Emirati-Israeli plan to attack Yemenis from the occupied Socotra islands east of Gulf of Aden.

These local sources have confirmed that last week a number of Emirati and Israeli officers arrived in the Socotra archipelago to form an operations room at the joint military base on Abdul Kuri Island.

This comes as the UAE established a military base for the Israeli regime on Abdul Kuri Island and a number of maritime surveillance centers for the Gulf of Aden, the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, and the Horn of Africa since 2020. 

The French website G-Forum had reported on the plan in 2020, and in September, the French website Intelligence Online confirmed that Emirati and Israeli intelligence officers had entered Socotra Island later in May 2020, and that Abu Dhabi had pressured the Southern Transitional Council (STC) of Yemen, a UAE-sponsored separatist group operating in the south, to agree to the construction of a joint Emirati-Israeli base on Abdul Kuri Island.

The Socotra archipelago is one of the 22 governorates of Yemen, located in the northwestern Indian Ocean off the coast of Al-Mahra Governorate, and consists of the islands of Socotra, Abdul Kuri, Samha, Darsa, Kara'il Pharaoh, and Sayal.

Abdul Kuri Island is one of the most important Yemeni islands in Socotra, which oversees international shipping routes in the Indian Ocean to the Horn of Africa and Bab-el-Mandeb, and its residents have previously been displaced by forces affiliated with the UAE.

The report from these sources indicates that Abu Dhabi is preparing this military base to host Israeli warplanes for airstrikes on provinces controlled by the Ansarullah government to check Yemeni resistance operations in the Red Sea against Israeli ships and ports.

A report published last November by the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) confirms that the Israeli regime has deployed its sensors and radars on Abdul Kuri Island to help intercept missiles and drones fired by Ansarullah. 

Breaking bones of Operation Prosperity Guardian; backbreaking Ansarullah pressure on the Israeli economy 

Since the beginning of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, Ansarullah started its operations in solidarity with the Palestinian people under the strategy of "unity of fronts", in phases opening a war front against Israeli maritime and then territorial interests from the Red Sea. 

During this period, Ansarallah's blockade of Bab-el-Mandeb Strait to commercial ships bound for the occupied territories have caused heavy damage to sea-reliant Israeli economy, as the continuation of this situation over the past year has put severe pressure on foreign trade and the prosperity of ports, causing increasing inflation in this regime. Many insurance companies or large shipping companies, such as Maersk, have either completely stopped transporting goods to the occupied territories or are operating ships to Israel at a very high cost and by taking alternative routes.

The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth wrote in February about the impact of the Yemeni attacks, saying that before these attacks, the cost of each container was $2,000, but now it has increased to $8,000, and if before this blockade the ships took a month to reach Israel, now this time has doubled.

On the other hand, the missile and drone operations of the Yemeni resistance have repeatedly outmanuvered the defense systems of the Israeli regime and its Western and Arab allies, and have managed to inflict damage on military, security and economic centers deep in the occupied territories, especially the regime's capital.

The Red Sea front pressure on Tel Aviv, given the complete reliance of the Israeli foreign trade on the maritime economy, has been a source of great concern for Israeli and American officials from the very beginning. For this reason, the US, along with some other Western countries, decided in January last year to directly involve in the Red Sea battle to counter Ansarallah's attacks, forming a coalition dubbed the "Prosperity Guardian" under the guise of protecting free shipping in the region but actually for protecting Israeli interests. 

However, the American naval escalation has not only failed to provide maritime security to Tel Aviv, but also exposed the US warships and and aircraft carriers to Yemeni missile strikes. 

According to military experts, the recently announced surprise operation by Sana'a forces, which forced the American-British squadrons and combat formations to retreat from the region, is a strong message from Ansarullah to the Western coalition that Sana'a, in addition to the ability to carry out retaliatory attacks, has accurate and high-level intelligence capabilities to identify hostile movements and neutralize them, an incident that has practically been repeated in the monitoring of Emirati-Israeli movements in Socotra, making it clear to adversaries that Ansarullah is always one step ahead of them.

After failure of the US cover provided to them following successful drone attack of Ansarullah on the heart of Tel Aviv in September, the Israelis sought to destroy Yemen's economic infrastructure with a large-scale airstrike and force Ansarullah to stop its pro-Gaza operations. 

But now the Israeli regime's move to deploy radar and possibly drone systems on Yemeni islands with the help of the Emirates shows that not only did that attack not affect the Yemenis' ability and determination to continue supporting the resistance in Gaza and Lebanon, but also even the Israelis have seen this strategy and its continuation as costly and ineffective and have thought of another solution to counter Yemeni projectiles. Naturally, the construction of radar and attack facilities on Yemeni islands can more quickly inform the regime's defense systems of the time and path of Ansarallah's missile and drone attacks and even provide them with information about Yemeni missile and drone storage depots.

Still, if Ansarullah managed to bring the American and European naval power to its knees and strike the occupied territories from 2,000 kilometers away and cross multilayer air defenses, with its intelligence dominance of the enemy activities it will not be difficult for it to crush Emirati-Israeli military bases on Yemeni islands, and this means that Israel will not take advantage of this arrangement either. 

From Yemen to Gaza wars: Record of Emirati-Israeli cooperation in the Red Sea 

Geographical isolation and the resulting dependence of the Israeli regime on sea routes have long made developments in Yemen the focus of attention of Israeli leaders due to Yemen's overseeing the Red Sea and Bab-el-Mandeb.

The Israeli regime along with Saudi Arabia and Jordan had previously acted to protect the Yemeni royal family against Yemeni nationalists who had the support of President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and socialist tendencies during the 1962-1965 civil war. 

During the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, Yemen in association with Egypt blocked Israeli oil tankers to the Red Sea, leading to catastrophic consequences to Tel Aviv. 

In contemporary period, after the victory of the Yemeni revolutionaries led by Ansarallah in 2014 and the fleeing of US and Saudi-backed government from Sanaa, the Israelis once again moved towards playing a bolder role in the security situation in the Red Sea, and this role was played mainly with the participation of the Emiratis.

With the beginning of Saudi attacks on Yemen, the Israeli regime first stationed its military forces on islands in Eritrea. In return for an arms contract worth about $1 billion, including 30 military aircraft and equipping an armored unit with 230 tanks, the regime proceeded to build a military base in the port of Massawa overlooking the Red Sea in Eritrea.

After that, the Jerusalem Post newspaper reported on January 11, 2021 the start of construction of a US and Israeli base on ‌Perim Island with the participation of the UAE.

Perim, or Mayoun, island is a volcanic Yemeni island that divides Bab-el-Mandeb as the entrance to the Red Sea into two eastern parts called the Strait of Alexander with a width of 3 kilometers. The western part, called the Dak al-Mayoun, with a width of 25 kilometers plays a very important role in controlling maritime traffic in the world.

After the normalization of relations between the UAE and Israel in 2020, various reports were published about the presence of Israeli tourists on the island and Tel Aviv's efforts to build a military base on Socotra island. 

In August 2020, an official Israeli document revealed that the agreement between the UAE and Israel to normalize relations also included strengthening military cooperation between them in the Red Sea.

During this period, cooperation between the UAE proxy forces, known as the National Resistance commanded by Tariq Saleh, and the Israelis began on the coastal strip of Al-Mokha near Bab-el-Mandeb. The media revealed secret meeting between Saleh and Israeli officers in November 2021 with the aim of developing the joint command room between this group and Israelis. 

In February 2023, Ansarullah issued a statement condemning the UAE’s expulsion of local residents from Abdul Kuri Island. The movement accused Abu Dhabi of carrying out a long-planned operation to turn Socotra into an Israeli-Emirati military and intelligence hub.

After Gaza war and Yemen's formation of pro-Palestinian front in the Red Sea, Israeli-Emirati intelligence cooperation upgraded to a new stage and Israeli ships began to unload in Emirati and Saudi ports on the Persian Gulf coasts for delivery to occupied territories through Arab countries rather than sailing a long and costly route by circumnavigating Africa. 

However, the new Abu Dhabi move to deal blows to Sana'a security interests through providing cover to Israeli military activities on Yemeni islands is certainly seen as a crossing of Ansarullah's red lines that can have consequences to the UAE, including expanding sea operations by Ansarullah to influence Emirati shipping.