PNN – Al-Akhbar reported that with Iran threatening to move the naval battle to the Bab al-Mandab Strait, US military movements in the Horn of Africa and against Yemen have increased.
According to the report of Pakistan News Network; After Sanaa observed US moves to transfer weapons to a US military base in Djibouti, General Dagwin Anders, commander of US Africa Command, held intensive meetings yesterday in Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, with US military leaders, including the army chief of staff, Major General Noah Ismail Thani.
The two sides discussed the establishment of a new base in the coastal region of Somaliland overlooking the Gulf of Aden, which extends to the Bab al-Mandab, US and Israeli media reported.
Anders’s visit to this internationally unknown territory coincided with the US State Department’s announcement that it had identified Yemeni preparations for a potential naval escalation in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait.
The US Embassy in Yemen had also claimed to have observed similar preparations, although the motivations behind this claim remain unclear, especially since sources close to the Sanaa government confirmed to Al-Akhbar that any military escalation in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait would be contingent on US military action.
However, this new US move in Somaliland, a region long disputed between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, coincided with Israel seeking US and European assurances to prevent Yemen from escalating tensions in the Red Sea, suggesting that the move is part of US-Israeli coordination in the region.
The US aircraft carrier USS George W. Bush, en route to the Middle East, avoided the Red Sea and sailed through the Strait of Good Hope with three destroyers: USS Ross, USS Donald Cook and USS Mason. This was in an effort to prevent any attack by Sanaa’s forces, who had vowed late last month to prevent the Red Sea from being used for any foreign aggression against Iran.
Brigadier General Mujib Shamsan, a military expert, attributed the ship’s avoidance of the Red Sea to deterrent measures put in place by Sanaa’s forces.
He noted that the aircraft carrier George W. Bush avoided the scenario of its counterpart, the USS Gerald R. Ford, which was attacked last month while sailing between the ports of Jeddah and Yanbu, resulting in a fire that burned on its deck for nearly 30 hours. Shamsan rejected Washington’s account of the fire, which attributed the fire to an electrical short circuit.
Commenting on the US moves in Somaliland, he saw them as part of growing US and Israeli concerns about Yemen’s potential use of the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait as leverage.
He stressed that a renewed escalation of tensions in that region is possible, and its path will be determined by developments in the ongoing conflict between Iran and the American and Israeli enemy.
Similarly, sources in Sanaa did not rule out a return to naval confrontations in the Red Sea with the United States if tensions escalate in the Strait of Hormuz.
These sources confirmed to Al-Akhbar that Yemen will not abandon the axis of resistance in the face of military escalation.
They noted: The increased US presence in the Arabian Sea and its use by Washington to encircle Iran will soon be met with Yemeni intervention. The Yemenis will take steps to prevent the use of the Arabian Sea to carry out hostile actions against Iran or any Muslim country.