“We have been saying this a long time,” he said on a visit to Brussels. “I have been here three times before and always we said if we didn’t do this … the Houthis will never stop. The Houthis have an ideology, have a project. Iran has a project in the region and unfortunately, the others do not respond.”
He expressed frustration that the EU and U.S. spent years pouring their diplomatic energies into wooing Tehran for a nuclear deal, rather than exerting more pressure on the Islamic Republic to stop supporting their Houthi allies, fellow Shi’ite Muslims who were seeking to impose what he labeled a “theocratic, totalitarian” police state.
The idea behind the nuclear talks was that Tehran should limit its nuclear ambitions in return for sanctions relief, but an accord proved out of reach.
No one paid attention
Bin Mubarak noted international momentum for action — which has included U.S. and British strikes on Houthi targets — did not finally come about “because of what [the Houthis] did to the Yemenis. They killed thousands of Yemenis. Not because of the atrocities they committed, raping women … jailing women … Just look at what Houthis did. No one is paying attention.”
He explained Western diplomacy toward Iran was supposed to have focused on three elements: the nuclear program, Tehran’s support for regional proxies, and its ballistic missile program. The fixation on the first, to the detriment of the other two, means the West is now facing an adversary in Yemen that has been very well armed by Iran, bin Mubarak complained.
“[Iran’s] Shahed drones, the first time we started hearing the European Union talking about it, they were being used in Ukraine. But before that, for years, we were saying Iran is supplying Houthis and drones are attacking Yemeni people. No one was believing [it],” he continued, adding that Houthi drone strikes stopped Yemeni oil exports in October 2022.
Christian Oliver
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