Houthi rebels fire another ballistic missile at the UAE while the President of Israel was there.

 

Israeli President Isaac Herzog. The Hill/AP.

Houthi rebels have fired another ballistic missile at the UAE while the President of Israel was there. The Hill. The UAE was able to destroy the missile, which landed in an unpopulated area. It is unclear what the target of the missile was. The launch happened hours after the arrival of Israeli President Isaac Herzog. Herzog was there for the first visit to the country by Israelis since the normalization of relations under President Trump at the Abraham Accords. Herzog condemned the attack and said he supported UAE's security efforts. The attack marks the third missile attack on the UAE from the Houthi rebels in recent weeks.

My Comment:

This looks like it was a very poorly executed assassination attempt by the Houthi Rebels. Given the inaccuracy of these ballistic missiles and the fact that the Houthis probably didn't have an exact location for Herzog, not to mention the UAE's air defenses, it had almost zero chance of working. 

But I don't think that it was a coincidence that the Houthis launched this missile while Isaac Herzog was there. The Houthis hate Israel as much as their Iranian sponsors do and if they had managed to kill or injure him it would have been a propaganda coup for them. They failed but they had to take the chance on it. 

And I wonder if the Iranians didn't order this attack specifically. The Iranians are the ones that are supplying these weapons to the Houthi rebels. And they obviously hate the Israelis. Their proxy war isn't just with Saudi Arabia it's with Israel as well. 

Indeed, it was Iran and Yemen that helped create the Abraham Accords in the first place. The Sunni Muslims have not had good relations with Israel since the country was created. But the fact that the Iranians have caused and made worse the war in Yemen united the Sunni Gulf States and Israel. 

As for the UAE, they better hope that the Houthis run out of ballistic missiles before they run out of interceptor missiles. I get the feeling that the Biden administration does not want to help them in their fight against the Houthis. Indeed, I doubt Biden is even aware that there is a war in Yemen. 

Speaking of Yemen, it sounds as though there is an offensive going on against the Houthis by the Yemeni government. That might be why the Houthis are trying to attack the UAE. They might be losing the bases that launch these missiles soon so they are using them as fast as they can. Perhaps, I am certainly not an expert on what is going on in Yemen.