نشریه مطالعات سیاست خارجی تهران
پیاپی 15 (زمستان 1398)

After the unification of south and north Yemen, the two parties of the General People's Congress and Yemen Socialist party (YSP) formed the first unified government for this country. After the first parliamentary elections after the unification were held in 1993, the Reform Party was also added to these two existing parties. The three parties gained most of the seats in the parliament and proved to be the most popular and influential in Yemen. Gradually, two other vast public movements appeared: Ansar Allah and the Southern Movement. Ansar Allah was first only a Zaidi cultural and educational movement which turned into a strong and instrumental political movement over time. The Southern Movement was also founded by the soldiers and employees of Southern Yemen and started its activities as a movement with demands. By the 2000, many of the traditional Yemeni parties were absorbed by the two big parties of Congress and Reform. With the decline of the aforementioned political parties in Yemen, Ansar Allah and the Southern Movement grow more and more in power and Yemen's political scene was therefore divided among four strong political forces to guide the people.

After the first and second World Wars, the international centers of influence went through transformations and all the international powers seeking waterways and straits concentrated their attention on Yemen. At the time, the bipolar world had turned into an arena of gamesmanship and competition between two global superpowers of the Soviet Union and the United States of America. By the time the first government was formed in Yemen (late eighteenth century), the Saudi Arabia invaded this country. After the foundation of the third Saudi state by Abdul Aziz Al Saud, Yemen was invaded again by Saudi Arabia in the third decade of the twentieth century. The game which was primarily for controlling the fate of Yemeni nation and meeting the interests of first the Britain and second the United States of America continued. During the past decades, Saudi Arabia has been one of the main directors of the Yemen stage; so much that by the beginning of the movement known as Arab Spring, the Al Saud family came to believe that the fate of Yemeni nation is completely in their hands. This led to this thought that Yemen is subject to their control and jurisdiction and they can interfere with the affairs of this country. Proposing the project of Khalij, buying the leaders of Yemeni Reformation Party, financial support and selling weaponry are amonga few of these interferences. When Riyadh felt that they have lost the power to control Yemen, they planned for a direct invasion of this country. The main goal of this invasion –supported by the US and a coalition of some of the Arab countries- was to restore their dominance and take control of the fate of Yemenis.

As a result of an impetuous decision which didn't consider the requirements for victory, Riyadh waged an exterritorial war against Yemen. For the first time, the war was declared from another capital. On 25 March 2015, Adel al-Jubeir, former Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs and the current Minister of State for Foreign Affairs who was in Washington officially declared war against Yemen. Declaring war from Washington implies more reasons than merely trying to boost their forces' spirit. By choosing Washington as the place to declare a war, Saudi Arabia sent clear messages to both its enemies and allies. A thorough look at the current situation of Saudi Arabia tells us that this country has entered regional wars with a few distinct clear reasons:

- It's a reaction to all the problems this country is dealing with.

- It's an attempt to maintain its leadership role in the region.

- It's an attempt to reinforce the political relations with its main allies both in the region and in the West.

Following the protests, uprisings and armed rebellions in Egypt and Tunisia early 2011, the Yemenis also poured into the streets toprotest as a result of their frustration with the incompetent and corrupt government ruling over them for nearly three decades. They protested against Ali Abdullah Salih who had brought about nothing but poverty, cultural and political backwardness and deprivation of the public services. In November 2011, at the height of armed conflicts and after months of negotiations, the main political parties of the country settled for the solution offered by the Gulf Cooperation Council and signed an agreement. Based on this agreement, the power was supposed to be transferred during a two-year time span. According to the agreement, Ali Abdullah Salih, the president, had to move into a non-active role pending the presidential election in return for immunity from prosecution and his Vice President, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi was supposed to become the acting president. The main parts of the process were first the formation of a government of national unity and then a conference of national dialogue. Two years of attempts failed to achieve what was intended and 2015 marked the beginning of crisis and conflict (Saif, 2015:5). Most of the members of the European Union had either a minor or no role at all in solving the crisis especially after the conflicts were aggravated in 2015. Late 2014, some of the members such as the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland defined some missions for themselves especially based on mediation or human rights-related issues. However, we can hardly recognize them as important players trying to solve the crisis or claim that they were managing it either regionally or internationally. But the UK is an exception among the European countries; on the one hand, the British Martin Griffiths is playing an effective role as the United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen at the Office of the Special Envoy ofthe Secretary-General for Yemen and tries to accelerate the peace negotiations in this country, and on the other hand, by a vast military support of the Saudi Arabia-led coalition against Yemen, the UK is one of the main instigators of the crisis and violators of the human rights in this country (Bonnefoy, 2020:70).

The strategic importance of the Red Sea is mainly because of its geographical situation; this sea connects three continents of Africa, Asia and Europe. It is also connected to the Mediterranean Sea through the Suez Canal in Egypt. Therefore, from the point of view of political geography and strategy, the Red Sea is an important shipping route. This sea is considered significant from different angles for the surrounding countries and also regional and international powers; some are focused on the security, military, political and economicaspects of the sea and other on the social and cultural respects. However, what has mainly created the competition among all the countries and regional and trans-regional powers is the security, military and economic significance of the Red Sea. This significance has led all the super powers of the world to try to assert their control over the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait in during the past centuries and spare no attempts or rivalries to claim dominance over the sea and the strait. They took the matters too far that the greed to own the sea and its benefits led to colonization of the countries surrounding the sea. Since there are still conflicts going on to exercise influence and assert dominance over the Red Sea in the three domestic, regional and international arenas, we aim to both get more familiar with the influential regional and international powers in this conflict and reveal Israel's role in it. We will also try to answer some of the questions in this regard: Given that the world is moving toward the unipolarity, would the Red Sea turn into an exclusive territory for the West and Israel? Can the eastern powers such as China, Russia, Iran and Turkey have a position in this conflict? We will then examine the situation of the countries bordering the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait and show the effects of the socalled conflict on them. In the end, we will answer the two following questions: 11. Why has Somalia, as one of the countries bordering the Red sea, been neglected during the past three decades? 22. In what ways are the Yemen war and the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab related?

Anis al-Naqqash is a political activist and a scholar and researcher in the field of strategic and regional affairs. He was born in Beirut in 1951 and joined the Palestinian Fatah Movement. He was one of the first supporters of Iranian Islamic Revolution and has played an important role in founding the resistance movement in Lebanon. He is specialized in sociology and international politics. He has written a book, Confederalism of the East; the Conflict of the Policies and Identities, and several articles for newspapers and journals.