My response to an accusation by the Turkish foreign minister, who claims that Saudi Arabia was dragged into the war.
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On September 19, 2026, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Saudi Arabia should not be dragged into the conflict and that the country may have military needs that the newly inked Mecca Joint Defense Agreement can address. That is distorting the facts about how the war in Yemen unfolded. He was actually saying that the war between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia should not be part of the discussion of the war on Iran. The Mecca Agreement was a response by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey to Trump’s changed Middle East security policies, which sent the same message that Europe and NATO received: “We’re downgrading our contribution to your security.” So, why does the Turkish foreign minister not want to have the war in Yemen discussed in the talks about the war on Iran? My take? On July 3, 2026, Saudi warplanes entered Yemeni airspace to prevent an Iranian passenger plane from landing at Sana’a International Airport. The plane had members of the Ansarullah Houthis among its passengers, who returned from the funeral of the Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei. Its ally, the Yemeni government, bombed the landing strip of the airport amid Saudi attempts to push the passenger plane away from the airport. The Houthis reacted by blaming the Saudis for the bombing of the airport and responded by firing missiles into Saudi Arabia. The Houthis began to focus on Saudi oil exports via the Red Sea when Saudi Arabia carried out the first waves of bombardments on Houthi positions in the west of Yemen. In fact, Saudi Arabia brought Trump’s war on Iran to Yemen this way. So, the war in Yemen is intertwined with the war on Iran. |