Serving the Obstructionists: Are the Revolutionary Guards colluding with Netanyahu to spoil the nuclear deal…?!
Yemen
Yamanat
Hossam Radman
After the second meeting between Witkoff and Araqchi in Rome, an optimistic impression prevailed in international and regional circles that the train of Iran-US negotiations had been successfully set on the diplomatic track and that this train had started moving slowly after the negotiations moved from the political to the technical level, but that its final destination is still a matter of anticipation.
This political impression is also supported by a number of pieces of evidence:
The Iranian government has pandered to Trump’s instincts through trillion-dollar investment deals. Khamenei’s optimistic statements.
– Visit of Prince Khaled bin Salman to Tehran and his meeting with the Supreme Guide.
Trump’s statements in which he made Netanyahu cry and told him that he would not enter into a direct war to exclusively serve Tel Aviv’s interests.
The pace of US military buildup in the region has slowed compared to previous weeks.
– A decline in the proselytizing tone of the Western and Arab press regarding the war in Yemen, and the Saudi-UAE denial of the validity of the information claiming that they are considering a ground operation.
Generally speaking, we can observe an official “Arab-Iranian-American” consensus to bring the diplomatic route to fruition and avoid a war scenario. On the other hand, two parties are harmed by the colonization option: the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the Israeli government.
As usual, data subjects can use the servers with the aim of disrupting operations. One party must provide the pretext and the other party must initiate the escalation. This happened, for example, in March 2024, when the Iranian Foreign Ministry agreed with the US administration and Saudi leaders to support a matrix of settlements including stopping the war in Gaza, stopping piracy in the Red Sea, and implementing the road map in Yemen.
But Netanyahu spoiled the recipe and decided to assassinate the leaders of the Revolutionary Guards in Damascus on April 1, thus providing a pretext for the Revolutionary Guards to directly escalate the situation. On the other hand, Tel Aviv was content with a symbolic response to Iran and did not turn the situation into a broad regional confrontation, but rather obtained approval from Biden to advance towards Rafah, which represented a red line before the Iranian attacks.
Today, with the progress of the Iranian-American agreements, in a context of Arab and international welcome, it was expected that those concerned would rush towards obstruction along two possible paths:
– Tel Aviv assassinated a senior Iranian leader or targeted an important vital facility to prompt the Guard to respond.
– The Revolutionary Guards move their weapons into Yemen or Lebanon to harass Israel, while there is a defensive laxity that allows casualties that justify Netanyahu’s moves in the region or against Iran.
Today we see the features of the first path with the explosion of the port of Bandar Abbas. As for the second track, its indicators began in mid-April, and its main hero is the Houthi group.
After the Houthis refrained from targeting the Israeli rear since late March, they actively resumed operations after early indicators suggested the success of the Muscat negotiations. The irony is that at this time, Houthi attacks managed to penetrate Israeli defenses.
In recent days, the Israeli military announced its failure to intercept the Houthi missiles, and as the Americans prepared for such a scenario, the THAAD defense system operated by the US military in Israel was tasked with neutralizing the Houthi missiles and preventing Netanyahu from finding pretexts.
Over the past week, Washington has sought to punish the Houthis more forcefully by targeting economic infrastructure and intensifying campaigns to remove leaders, hoping they will get the message and change their behavior. At the same time, Washington wanted to provide a harsh response to discourage Tel Aviv from intervening militarily in Yemen.
However, the decisive US response is unlikely to help change the behavior of the Houthis, as the issue is not related to their own calculations, but rather those of the Revolutionary Guards, who see any agreement between the Pezeshkian government and the Trump administration as a threat to political and economic balances inside Iran, undermining its dominance based on sanctions economics and cross-border regional role.
It is most likely that the Yemeni arena will be the most appropriate to respond to the Bandar Abbas attack, given the difficulty of a direct response to Israel.
In the coming period, Tehran will witness strong polarization between politicians and the military, and the Revolutionary Guards will find a valuable opportunity to escalate the situation after the Iranian leader recently put strong pressure on it to show restraint and Khamenei considered the deal with Washington a victory over Israel.
Yemen