اخبار اليمن Gasping for the entitlements of peace.. The long breath negotiations suffocate Al-Houthi

The Houthi group, Iran's arm in Yemen, has again waved the option of war in the face of Saudi Arabia, in an attempt to unleash the stalemate that had afflicted negotiations and consultations between the two parties since the remarkable visit of the Saudi ambassador to Sana'a about two months ago.

This hint came on the lips of the deputy head of the group's government for defense and security affairs, Jalal Al-Ruwaishan, who said, in a statement to him, Thursday, to the group's "Al-Masirah" channel, that there was no response from the Saudi side until the moment "to resolve the humanitarian issue after the Ramadan negotiations."

While Al-Ruwaishan said that the negotiations with the Saudi side, mediated by Oman, "remain in their current state as attempts to achieve peace," and he claimed that his group "met them positively." The Houthi leader indicated that his group's estimates say that they (i.e. the Saudis) are "gaining time."

Directing his threats to Saudi Arabia, he said that his group has "the ability to militarily control Saudi ports and the flow of capital to them," adding: We hope that Saudi Arabia realizes that economic development plans cannot be combined with the invasion of a neighboring country.

The statements of the Houthi leader reveal the dilemma that his group suffers from over time, without reaching the agreement that the group seeks with the Saudi side, after more than a year has passed since the declaration of the international truce in Yemen, and about two months have passed since the remarkable visit of the Saudi ambassador, Muhammad Al Jaber. To Sana'a, accompanied by an Omani delegation, and the optimism that surrounded this visit that the features of a settlement that would end the war in Yemen would soon be reached.

Although the Saudi and Houthi side confirmed the departure of the Jaber family and the Omani delegation to Sanaa, with the continuation of these consultations and the possibility of repeating the visit, the passage of two months without this happening confirmed the reports that spoke of Saudi Arabia being surprised that the Houthi raised the ceiling of his demands, unlike what was the case during the secret negotiations held in Muscat during the past months preceding the visit.

These demands, which the Houthi group claims are confined to the humanitarian aspect, and have recently been called "peace entitlements" in this agreement. According to the group's leader in his last speech, they consist of "lifting the siege, releasing prisoners, paying compensation and reconstruction," in addition to a demand to pay Salaries in areas under its control by sharing the revenues of oil and gas produced in the liberated governorates.

The Houthi group believes in these "entitlements" as a fair deal through which Saudi Arabia and the liberated regions pay money to the group as a price for refraining from attacking it militarily, accepting peace and abandoning the war, taking advantage of the Saudi desire, along with the region and the international community, to end the war in Yemen, and also taking advantage of the dispersion of its opponents. and their inability or unwillingness to continue the war against it.

This perception of the Houthi group about the motives of its opponents towards peace, specifically Saudi Arabia, prompted it to bet that it would easily succeed in extracting the price or what it calls "peace entitlements" and in a short time, and even raised the ceiling of this price to the highest level, as happened during its reception of the Saudi ambassador in Sana'a in last April.

Contrary to what it had planned, the group is now aware of the predicament it is in with the passage of time without its success in extracting the "entitlements of peace", which makes it face difficult options to deal with this situation, including the difficulty of making the decision to escalate and return to open war against Saudi Arabia and the coalition, as it realizes that Its failure in the military option was the main motive for its acceptance of the truce in April of last year.

Its acceptance of the truce came after its crushing defeat in Shabwa, which destroyed its dreams of accessing the oil and gas fields in Marib, the extent of the human and material attrition that befell it after 8 years of battles, and that it had no ability to continue the open war on several fronts or what it used to call it a "The Battle of the Long Breath".

Just as the Houthi group realized its failure in the military battle and its inability to continue the battle of the "long breath", today it fears its failure in the peace battle and its realization of the difficulty of continuing the "long breath" negotiations, without achieving its goal of extracting a moral victory from its opponents that would save it face.