by LUKE MONTGOMERY ZUNGA
JOHANNESBURG, (CAJ News) – THE geopolitics of the Gulf shifted in favour of Iran.
The Ansarullah Houthis, trained and partly armed by Iran, captured the port city of Mokha on the Red Sea coast of Yemen and the strategic Perim Island to control the Red Sea choke point of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
Mokha is on the southern tip of Yemen, less than 50 kilometres from the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
Ansarullah Houthis are a resistance army, not the regular Yemeni army.
From 2012, Yemen was under US targeted sanctions, which included asset freezes and travel bans to force Yemenis to sign the Abraham Accords to restore relations with Israel.
The UN supported US sanctions in 2014. Most of Yemen’s asset transactions can only be conducted with the approval of OFAC (the US Office of Foreign Assets Control).
The regular Yemeni army did not defend or fight for Mokha because Yemenis do not approve of the hedged position of the internationally recognised Yemeni government.
Technically, Iran has control of two choke points – the Straits of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb. The GCC countries only have the Suez Canal, controlled by Egypt.
Saudi Arabia has to play a new card.
Its defence pact with Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan, all strong nations, will not save it.
Its exports are restricted by limited access to the two choke points. It has to close US military bases.
The blunder of Saudi Arabia, with other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, was to abandon the Arab philosophy and tacitly approve the genocide of Palestinians, lifting no finger and allowing American bases to fire missiles at Iran from the American Prince Sultan Air Base on Saudi soil.
Saudi Arabia saved America on 8 June 1974, when Secretary of State Henry Kissinger signed the petrodollar deal, which ended on 9 June 2024, and Saudi Arabia will diminish America by removing its air bases and changing alignment. Riyadh has to play the correct card this time.
As for African perspectives, Americans are not good politicians.
How will the GCC avoid the chokes, which would not be there had America not attacked Iran? How can America support Israel’s strategy of bombing and creating enemies of its neighbours?
One can see American thinking in their films is about negative heroism.
Donald Trump is celebrating American power when it is clear that power is dented. African people support Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali, who are closing American and French military bases in their countries.
The politics of Bab el-Mandeb and Hormuz brings South Africa into the picture, as the Cape of Good Hope will be the only naval freeway from Asia to Europe.
The US plays political games with South Africa when it is clear that the Cape of Good Hope is a strategic waterway which needs good relations with South Africa.
The Americans have already seen that, and they will make overtures to the South African government.
Hopefully, South Africa will talk to its neighbouring countries to craft a common stance if the US gets involved. The Houthis are demonstrating political maturity.
This is happening in front of the BRICS+ summit in Delhi, India, which Africans hope will not pander to American hegemony, but draft a common strategy. South Africa did well to avoid entanglement in the American web, but it is also its risk as South Africans are divided, roughly between Black and Whites.
– CAJ News