 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today, we'll be discussing the rapidly changing situation in Yemen following the drone strikes reportedly by the Houthis on an oil facility in Saudi Arabia. To talk more about this, we have with us Prabir Prakash. Hello, Prabir. Prabir, so there's been reports of a drone attack by the Houthis in the part of Saudi Arabia which borders the UAE. And this marks quite a substantial military step forward for the Houthis. So how do you analyze the latest attacks and what are the implications of it? Well, actually Saudis have accepted. There have been a strike. There are now four photographs, aerial images available, which shows the strike has happened. The Saudis have claimed only three drones. The Houthis have said they have actually used 10 drones. The size and the ability of the drones to inflict damage or the scale of the damage is not clear. But the fact that they can put almost the entire Saudi Arabia, as you can see the stroke took place, as you have said, the strike took place on Sheba. And it is again an oil infrastructure facilities over there. And you can see the circle that is here. It would seem to indicate now the entire Saudi Arabia is under Houthis drone range. Now how much of the drones change the military equation is an open question because there will be small drones which are easy to manufacture almost like shall we say toys or they can also carry a certain amount of munitions. Now if they have the ability to have this level of strikes, it can only expand in terms of the damage they can create. So whether it is a threat today or how much damage they can create today is only one part of the equation. Now the part of the equation is what can they do in the future? That means the whole of Saudi Arabia including Riyadh is under its threat, nuclear installations are supposed to come up, they will be under threat and of course the basic oil infrastructure or the energy infrastructure of Saudi Arabia, all of this can be endangered. If the Houthis are able to increase shall we say the weapons carrying capability or the explosive capability carrying capability of the drones. So I do think this is a qualitative step up. The more important issue is that the Houthis are not backing off under attack for four years they have continued to fight the whole territory and they are putting Saudi Arabia in a situation where they don't seem to be able to win and even the alliances that are there are starting to crack up. So I think militarily at the moment though there has been a huge cost they have paid and the Yemeni population have paid and I think the fact that they are surviving and the militarily capable of doing certain things itself makes Saudi Arabia's position of invading Yemen increasingly untenable. So I think that's the changing equation that we can see already United Arab Emirates seem to be backing off, are the Saudis going to back off soon and are we going to see peace in Yemen and as we know this has been the most shall we say horrendous attack in the 20th century, one million near completely near starvation and 18 million at serious risk. These are the kind of figures the at least a billion who have been infected by cholera and a huge number of deaths. All of this are a price that Yemen has paid for the Saudi invasion and I think we are likely to see I believe that a changing military scenario and a political scenario emerging from all of this. And you also mentioned the fractures in the Saudi-led alliance which has actually quite a ragtag composition of all sorts of elements including even reports of some al-Qaeda-affiliated ones. So the Southern Transitional Council has captured Aden although they are about they may be withdrawing soon. So how do you see this coalition especially considering as you mentioned that the UAE is also looking at withdrawing? If we look at the areas that are there there is in Yemen a substantial threat from al-Qaeda forces still and that area seems to be still under al-Qaeda occupation. Now when you come to Aden which has been a very old port Yemeni and Navy and Yemeni merchant community has been very well known even in much earlier times. So Aden being a port UAE seems to have some interest in it. Earlier itself we had actually history in which the South and the North Yemen has fought. It's also interesting how alignment changed because South Yemen earlier was backed by Egypt and North Yemen the Houthis were in fact fighting the Southern Alliance and South Yemen and it was actually the South is we are backing them the ones who are there now fighting. So these alignments have changed in the past as well. Currently it seems the Emiratis are interested in moving out of the war from Yemen. Their interest seems to be can we get Aden as a price of the war that we have waged and they therefore have been having this talks with the Southern Alliance who seem to have captured Aden much to the unhappiness of Saudi Arabia and Houthis forces who are in trying to take back Aden. But the Emiratis are really good fighting forces. If they do collide with the Southern Alliance and there is some indication that's happening then I don't think the Houthi forces are going to be very successful. What is the relationship between Saudis, the Houthi forces, Al-Qaeda and with the Southern Alliance we have to see because this triangle is an unresolved one. The point is Saudis and Al-Qaeda have seemed to have a shall we say alliance or shall we say tacit alliance of some kind. What they will do vis-a-vis Aden is something that we have to see. So I'm not sure at the moment how those shifting alliances will pan out. But one thing is very clear. The Saudis have been further weakened with this split and Houthis, apart from striking Saudi Arabia with drones, they also seem to be having certain tactical advantage because of the split among the shall we say their enemy camp. And taking a look at the global ramifications of this issue. So on the one hand we've seen over the past one year there have been noises in the western countries in the US and the UK about the war for the first time, especially after Kashoggi's murder. But more importantly in the region itself, Russia and Iran have been leading a particular process. And this whole equation also has a great amount of significance considering what's happening with the tankers and the state of Hormuz. So how do you analyze different alignments that are working at a regional level? You see it's very clear that Iran has had some shall we say arrows in its quiver. One of it was what it did itself. That means sabotaging certain tankers in the states of Hormuz, which Americans have accused of no evidence. But it seems that it could have been an Iranian strategy that if we don't export oil, others also won't. And states of Hormuz is something that really do control. Control in the sense they can stop tanker traffic. So that was one. And as we saw that the tit for tat tanker wars with the seizure in which the US actually prodded the UK to seize a Iranian tanker and Iran's response to that. That has also put into play what happens in the states of Hormuz. The US position has been, we with our allies will control the states of Hormuz. We'll put in a naval armada there and that will happen. But unfortunately they don't seem to have got much support from their allies for such an armada. They had a meeting it seems in Bahrain. And I don't see anything that has come out of it. On the other hand, the Russians and the Chinese and the Iranians have been talking of a collective security. And collective security sounds better than saying we will protect all of you. Just let us control the Persian Gulf and the states of Hormuz, which is quite far from the United States. The collective security of the regional powers, combining to say we want peace, certainly is far more powerful. Provided the Saudis and the Emiratis agree. Israel is still further off. It's really somewhere there. So they don't enter this equation. But Emiratis and Saudis do. Emiratis seem to be coming around to the issue of collective security. It seems to be playing ball now with Russia and China. The Emirati leadership was in China. They seem to have reached some understanding of how the Belt Road project will have a major hub in Dubai. So taking all of this, we see again, shifting alignments. And will Saudis come around to this? We'll see that Eurasia, landbush in China and Russia are the much the bigger players. Their future also lies here. And not aligning with Israel and the United States, but really having a regional understanding. Will the collective security actually trump, shall we say, the US attempts to still maintain what I will call a colonial misadventure in the region and try and beat Iran down to the ground? Will that succeed? I think at the moment it seems the American policies are failing. Saudis have failed to win in Yemen and their war is going nowhere. I don't think war is going to be popular in Saudi Arabia. And I think the writing is in the wall for them that if they continue, they're also at risk. So I do think there is a possibility of a realignment. So the chances of war, which were much brighter, shall we say, or more ominous with the tanker wars, we seem to have some receiving of that. And particularly the fact that the UK did not agree to implement American warrants, which they had issued on grace one. So taking all this into account, I think we are looking for, as you said, a realignment in the region and hopefully a more equitable piece for the party's concern and no dominance of one over the other. Because I don't think a cornering Iran, as Saudis were trying, is a viable proposition any longer. But we have to see. Thank you, Prabir. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching News Click.