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Last night, Iran carried out retaliatory strikes on Israel in response to the Israeli attack on the consulate in Damascus. We are joined by veteran war correspondents Hala Jaber and Elijah J. Magnier to discuss the significance of the strike, what it means for the conflict in Gaza, and its geopolitical implications.
Hala Jaber, a Lebanese-British journalist, was honored with the Amnesty International Journalist of the Year Award in 2003. She garnered the title of Foreign Correspondent of the Year at the British Press Awards in both 2005 and 2006 for her exceptional coverage of the Iraq War.
Elijah J. Magnier, a veteran war correspondent with over 37 years of experience covering West Asia. He has resided in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, and Syria for extended periods, specializing in political assessments, strategic planning, terrorist organizations, and non-state actors.
Today, we are joined by Seyed Mohammad Marandi, a Professor of English Literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran, to dispel the Western myths surrounding the Islamic Republic and examine its rise to power, foreign policy, and leadership in the axis of resistance.
In Yemen, The Squabbling Tribes — ancient vehicle used by Empires to divide and rule — have been harnessed by Ansar Allah into the unbreakable internal front; the rock upon which shatters the thalassocratic West.
By Saqr Abo Hasan at The Cradle.
In Yemen, tribes hold the keys to power
Yemen’s many tribes are key powerbrokers in the country’s wars and conflicts. Today, it is Ansarallah, and not foreign powers, that has emerged as the predominant force harnessing tribal influence and strategically managing these disparate groups.
Throughout the considerable history of internal conflicts in Yemen, the influential role of tribes has been critical in shaping the outcomes of external wars and internal power struggles.
These ancient tribal structures, deeply embedded in Yemen’s social fabric and military dynamics, have played kingmaker roles in times of conflict – even during periods when the state, with its superior military and security apparatuses, was involved, as seen in the Six Sadaa Wars.
Spanning from 2004 to 2010, those wars pitted government forces against Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement. But each side could only come to the fight with their own set of tribal allies.
Over the years, and especially today, Yemeni tribes in the northern regions – where the Houthi clan is based – have evolved into an “inexhaustible reservoir of fighters,” embodying a formidable force that can be mobilized under the right political and social conditions.
As Yemeni writer Ali Abdullah al-Dhayani points out, these particular Yemeni tribes are “natural warriors, as their men – and even women in some areas – carry weapons as part of daily life.”
The Hashid and Bakil tribes
Two prominent tribal confederations, Hashid (led by the Al-Ahmar family) and Bakil (led by the Abu Lahoum family), stand out as the most potent forces in Yemen’s military, civil, and executive spheres. The Hashid tribe’s clout has helped it secure four seats in the Yemeni House of Representatives for the sons of its late leader, Abdullah al-Ahmar.
Meanwhile, Saba Abu Lahoum, the scion of the Abu Lahoum family, now leads the Bakil tribe, inheriting the mantle from his father, Sinan Abu Lahoum, who passed away in 2021.
For decades, the Al-Ahmar and Abu Lahoum families have vied for the prestigious position of “Sheikh of the Sheikhs of Yemen,” a title that has oscillated between them depending on prevailing political winds.
The loose alliance forged between the Hashid and Bakil encompasses the majority of tribes across northern and eastern Yemen, wielding significant influence. It is worth noting that Ansarallah belongs to the Bakil confederation, while late former president Ali Abdullah Saleh’s Sanhan clan belongs to Hashid.
According to a study by Iraqi researcher Nizar al-Abadi, published on the Al-Mutamar.net website, which is affiliated with the Saleh-affiliated General People’s Congress Party (GPC) in Yemen, “The number of Yemeni tribes is estimated at 200–168 of them are in the north and the rest in the south, with the majority of them living in mountainous areas.”
Tribalism in politics
Successive governments in Yemen have historically sought to exert control over the tribes, employing various strategies to secure their allegiance. One notable example is Saleh’s establishment of the “Tribal Affairs Authority” in the early 1980s, through which monthly salaries and bonuses were distributed to numerous tribal leaders across the country to ensure the alignment of their interests with Saleh’s ruling GPC.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a leader of one of the tribes informs The Cradle that this government approach encouraged materialism and corruption within tribal leadership, effectively buying their loyalty for the Saleh government:
Joining the Tribal Affairs Authority was based on loyalty to the regime. It included hundreds of sheikhs who had no influence, while opponents of the ruling party were punished by being deprived of salaries. Sometimes, marginal figures were pushed to assume the leadership of the tribe.
After Saleh stepped down in early 2012, there were calls to abolish the Tribal Affairs Authority and invest its annual budget of around 13 billion Yemeni riyals into national infrastructure. But the successor government to Mohammed Salem Basindwa decided against this. It resumed Saleh’s tried-and-tested financial approach “to win over the tribal leaders,” according to a tribal source.
During Yemen’s 2011 ‘Arab Spring,’ Saleh established a new entity – the “Yemen Tribal Council” – to contain the growing tribal preference for the opposition, especially after several of these leaders, including Hashid Chief Sadiq al-Ahmar, publicly supported the popular uprising against his government.
According to political activist Shaalan al-Abrat, the tribes’ involvement provided significant momentum to the so-called February 11 revolution in some Yemeni cities, such as Dhamar (100 km south of Sanaa).
In late 2012, the city of Saada in northern Yemen, an Ansarallah stronghold, witnessed the emergence of the “Tribal Popular Cohesion Council,” which included tribal leaders supportive of the resistance movement. The council quickly expanded to include all tribes in and outside areas controlled by the current Ansarallah-led government based in the capital, Sanaa.
As Dr Abdo al-Bahsh, head of the political department at the Yemeni Studies and Research Center, describes the development:
[This council] was imposed by the Yemeni political reality and attempts to subject Yemen to American control … [It] expresses the aspirations of the Yemeni people and their national will, far from sectarian, ethnic, regional, and narrow partisanship.
The council is headed by Dhaif Allah Rassam, a tribal leader from Saada Governorate. It has branches and representatives in all Yemeni governorates currently under Sanaa’s control. Importantly, its influence extends to tribes outside their area of control, such as in the Shabwa, Ma’rib, and Al-Dhalea areas of Yemen.
Bolstering the argument that the tribes play a key role in dispute resolution, the council’s Dhamar branch head, Abbas al-Amdi, says that throughout the years of aggression against Yemen, the council was instrumental in strengthening internal unity, ending tribal revenge wars, and supplying the fighting fronts with tribal fighters.
Ansarallah’s political ascendency
Yemen’s political factions have long leveraged tribal affiliations to enhance popular support. The Saudi-backed Islah Party, affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, strategically aligned itself with tribal leaders upon its establishment in 1990, with Abdullah bin Hussein al-Ahmar, chief of the Hashid tribe, assuming its presidency.
The assertion of tribal authority over state influence was exemplified by Hamid al-Ahmar – brother of Hashid’s leader – when asked in an interview on Al-Jazeera whether he was afraid of returning to Sanaa after voicing support for Saleh’s opposition: “Whoever has Sadiq [al-Ahmar] as his chief, and Hashid as his tribe, would not be afraid.”
Tribal influence was strikingly evident during Saleh’s ousting through the 2012 Gulf Initiative, in which a coalition of Yemeni tribal and political factions orchestrated that delicate transition of power. Around this time, Ansarallah capitalized on its tribal networks to expand its movement’s influence, particularly in the country’s northern regions. It gradually extended its reach across Yemen in an alliance with Saleh’s GPC and the armed forces.
Ansarallah’s adept handling of tribal structures facilitated their rise, merging ideology with tribalism to galvanize support. This symbiotic relationship contributed to their military and popular ascendancy, as noted by Yemeni political analyst Abdul Salam al-Nahari:
[Before 2012], finding someone who believed in Ansarallah was difficult due to years of misinformation. However, after 2015, society began to become aware of Ansarallah, especially among tribes exhausted by wars and internal conflicts … After the war in Yemen, the tribe has now become more cohesive after playing a major role in community steadfastness and in supplying the fighting fronts with weapons, money, and men.
Tribe-centric strategies
Nahari points out that the Saudi-led aggression against Yemen put the country at a crossroads: either remaining under American guardianship or breaking away from it at any cost. “The people of Yemen chose independence,” he declares.
The foreign aggression united Yemenis during a time when Ansarallah was encouraging the advancement of many tribal leaders to the front ranks and giving them the opportunity to lead.
Examples abound. In the Al-Bayda region of central Yemen, tribal leader Saleh bin Saleh al-Wahbi founded the “Wahbi Brigades” in 2016. After his death in 2021, his son Bakil succeeded him.
In the Al-Razzamat region, north of Saada Governorate near the southern border of Saudi Arabia, tribal leader and member of the House of Representatives Abdullah Aydah al-Razami threw his weight behind Ansarallah Founder Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi, and his tribe fought a fierce war against government forces after the latter’s killing.
During the foreign aggression against Yemen, his son Yahya al-Razami was appointed commander of the Hamidan axis forces and assumed command of the “Death Brigades,” the elite forces affiliated with Ansarallah.
The son played a vital role in the Victory from God operation in 2019 when his forces captured thousands of soldiers loyal to the Yemeni government in Riyadh and seized a vast amount of weapons and military equipment.
Al-Nahari asserts that “fighting in any area where there is no popular incubator is like fighting on open ground.” Ansarallah has actively sought to create supportive environments in strategic areas. By neutralizing certain tribes through treaties and agreements, such as in Marib, Ansarallah has effectively extended its influence with minimal combat cost, illustrating its strategic understanding of Yemen’s tribal politics.
PEPE ESCOBAR Interview: Ukrainian PR Stunt on the Russian Border, NATO in Ukraine, Multipolarity and More
The ‘Rockstar of Geopolitics’ Returns to the DDG Show! Discussing Desperate Attempts to Create Chaos Before Russian Elections, NATO Troops in Ukraine, the Collective West Running Out of Options for ‘Project Ukraine,’ and More!
Joining us today is @CarlZha , a Chinese-born political commentator and the host of the “Silk And Steel Podcast.” We’ll be delving into Zelensky getting shut down by China at Davos, the Taiwan Elections, and exploring safe methods for traversing the Red Sea.
He discusses at length:
Even Lavrov was forced to use the Palestinian Authority as official face of Palestine at the UN, despite being discredited and reviled by Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza in most recent polls, since the PLO remains the only consensual modus vivendi to enforce an urgent permanent ceasefire. Yet both Hamas and the Zionists are dead set against coexistence (and do you blame Palestinians after the frank unrepentant satanism they face??). The forms must be observed, including this two-state offer by the arabs, guaranteed to be rejected by the combined West through their zionist proxy, further exposing them. This will serve as the equivalent of the Russian Ultimatum of December 2021, with a subsequent free hand given to the Resistance Axis to enforce peace. Organized by the same Russians at the UN and through the Saudis and OIC! Priceless
Inexorably, we continue to be sucked, deeper and deeper, into the vortex of the Raging Twenties.
The following column was written one year after the assassination of Gen Soleimani in Baghdad, on January 3, 2020, and published as the last essay of my book Raging Twenties, which came out in early 2021.
The Raging Twenties, as I then argued, started with a murder. The same applies to Raging 2024, which has started with the murder, in south Beirut, of Deputy Head of the Political Bureau of Hamas, Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri.
Iran’s response to the murder of Soleimani in 2020 sent a clear message to the Empire. Hezbollah’s response to the murder of Al-Arouri in Lebanese soil – a red line – may also send a clear message to Israel. Yet, ominously, there are no guarantees this will be enough to contain a regional war.
Three years after the murder of Gen Soleimani, it may be enlightening to check out what changed – on so many levels: from Iran starring as a full-fledged BRICS member (along with Saudi Arabia) and key actor of multipolarity, to the renewed impetus of the Axis of Resistance.
Gen Soleimani’s years of painstaking work shaped his legacy as the Designer of the Masterplan: the Axis of Resistance finally being able to stare down the Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder and its aircraft carrier in West Asia. That’s the incandescent geopolitical juncture we find ourselves today.
So let’s briefly review how we got here.
Soleimani geopolitics, one year on
Pepe Escobar
January 2021
One year ago, the Raging Twenties started with a murder.
The assassination of Maj Gen Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), alongside Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iraq’s Hashd al-Sha’abi militia, by laser-guided Hellfire missiles launched from two MQ-9 Reaper drones, was an act of war.
Not only the drone strike at Baghdad airport, directly ordered by President Trump, was unilateral, unprovoked and illegal: it was engineered as a stark provocation, to detonate an Iranian reaction that would then be countered by American “self-defense”, packaged as “deterrence”. Call it a perverse form of double down, reversed false flag.
The imperial Mighty Wurlitzer spun it as a “targeted killing”, a pre-emptive op squashing Soleimani’s alleged planning of “imminent attacks” against US diplomats and troops.
False. No evidence whatsoever. And then, Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, in front of his Parliament, offered the ultimate context: Soleimani was on a diplomatic mission, on a regular flight between Damascus and Baghdad, involved in complex negotiations between Tehran and Riyadh, with the Iraqi Prime Minister as mediator, at the request of President Trump.
So the imperial machine – in complete mockery of international law – assassinated a de facto diplomatic envoy.
The three top factions who pushed for Soleimani’s assassination were US neo-cons – supremely ignorant of Southwest Asia’s history, culture and politics – and the Israeli and Saudi lobbies, who ardently believe their interests are advanced every time Iran is attacked. Trump could not possibly see The Big Picture and its dire ramifications: only what his major Israeli-firster donor Sheldon Adelson dictates, and what Jared of Arabia Kushner whispered in his ear, remote-controlled by his close pal Muhammad bin Salman (MbS).
The armour of American “prestige”
The measured Iranian response to Soleimani’s assassination was carefully calibrated to not detonate vengeful imperial “deterrence”: precision missile strikes on the American-controlled Ain al-Assad air base in Iraq. The Pentagon received advance warning.
Predictably, the run-up towards the first anniversary of Soleimani’s assassination had to degenerate into intimations of US-Iran once again on the brink of war.
So it’s enlightening to examine what the Commander of the IRGC Aerospace Division, Brigadier General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, told Lebanon’s Al Manar network: “The US and the Zionist regime [Israel] have not brought security to any place and if something happens here (in the region) and a war breaks out, we will make no distinction between the US bases and the countries hosting them.”
Hajizadeh, expanding on the precision missile strikes a year ago, added, “We were prepared for the Americans’ response and all our missile power was fully on alert. If they had given a response, we would have hit all of their bases from Jordan to Iraq and the Persian Gulf and even their warships in the Indian Ocean.”
The precision missile strikes on Ain al-Assad, a year ago, represented a middle-rank power, enfeebled by sanctions, and facing a huge economic/financial crisis, responding to an attack by targeting imperial assets that are part of the Empire of Bases. That was a global first – unheard of since the end of WWII. It was clearly interpreted across vast swathes of the Global South as fatally piercing the decades-old hegemonic armor of American” prestige”.
So Tehran was not exactly impressed by two nuclear-capable B-52s recently flying over the Persian Gulf; or the US Navy announcing the arrival of the nuclear-powered, missile loaded USS Georgia in the Persian Gulf last week.
These deployments were spun as a response to an evidence-free claim that Tehran was behind a 21-rocket attack against the sprawling American embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone.
The (unexploded) 107mm caliber rockets – by the way marked in English, not Farsi – can be easily bought in some underground Baghdad souk by virtually anybody, as I have seen for myself in Iraq since the mid-2000s.
That certainly does not qualify as a casus belli – or “self-defense” merging with “deterrence”. The Centcom justification actually sounds like a Monty Python sketch: an attack “…almost certainly conducted by an Iranian-backed rogue militia group.” Note that “almost certainly” is code for “we have no idea who did it”.
How to fight the – real – war on terror
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif did take the trouble to warn Trump he was being set up for a fake casus belli – and blowback would be inevitable. That’s a case of Iranian diplomacy being perfectly aligned with the IRGC: after all, the whole post-Soleimani strategy comes straight from Ayatollah Khamenei.
And that leads to the IRGC’s Hajizadeh once again establishing the Iranian red line in terms of the Islamic Republic’s defense: “We will not negotiate about the missile power with anyone” – pre-empting any move to incorporate missile reduction into a possible Washington return to the JCPOA. Hajizadeh has also emphasized that Tehran has restricted the range of its missiles to 2,000 km.
My friend Elijah Magnier, arguably the top war correspondent across Southwest Asia in the past four decades, has neatly detailed the importance of Soleimani.
Everyone not only along the Axis of Resistance – Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus, Hezbollah, Ansarullah – but across vast swathes of the Global South is firmly aware of how Soleimani led the fight against ISIS/Daesh in Iraq from 2014 to 2015, and how he was instrumental in retaking Tikrit in 2015.
Zeinab Soleimani, the impressive General’s daughter, has profiled the man, and the sentiments he inspired. And Hezbollah’s secretary-general Sayed Nasrallah, in an extraordinary interview, stressed Soleimani’s “great humility”, even “with the common people, the simple people.”
Nasrallah tells a story that is essential to place Soleimani’s modus operandi in the real – not fictional – war on terror, and deserves to be quoted in full:
“At that time, Hajj Qassem traveled from Baghdad airport to Damascus airport, from where he came (directly) to Beirut, in the southern suburbs. He arrived to me at midnight. I remember very well what he said to me: “At dawn you must have provided me with 120 (Hezbollah) operation commanders.” I replied “But Hajj, it’s midnight, how can I provide you with 120 commanders?” He told me that there was no other solution if we wanted to fight (effectively) against ISIS, to defend the Iraqi people, our holy places [5 of the 12 Imams of Twelver Shi’ism have their mausoleums in Iraq], our Hawzas [Islamic seminars], and everything that existed in Iraq. There was no choice. “I don’t need fighters. I need operational commanders [to supervise the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units, PMU].” This is why in my speech [about Soleimani’s assassination], I said that during the 22 years or so of our relationship with Hajj Qassem Soleimani, he never asked us for anything. He never asked us for anything, not even for Iran. Yes, he only asked us once, and that was for Iraq, when he asked us for these (120) operations commanders. So he stayed with me, and we started contacting our (Hezbollah) brothers one by one. We were able to bring in nearly 60 operational commanders, including some brothers who were on the front lines in Syria, and whom we sent to Damascus airport [to wait for Soleimani], and others who were in Lebanon, and that we woke up from their sleep and brought in [immediately] from their house as the Hajj said he wanted to take them with him on the plane that would bring him back to Damascus after the dawn prayer. And indeed, after praying the dawn prayer together, they flew to Damascus with him, and Hajj Qassem traveled from Damascus to Baghdad with 50 to 60 Lebanese Hezbollah commanders, with whom he went to the front lines in Iraq. He said he didn’t need fighters, because thank God there were plenty of volunteers in Iraq. But he needed [battle-hardened] commanders to lead these fighters, train them, pass on experience and expertise to them, etc. And he didn’t leave until he took my pledge that within two or three days I would have sent him the remaining 60 commanders.”
Orientalism, all over again
A former commander under Soleimani that I met in Iran in 2018 had promised me and my colleague Sebastiano Caputo that he would try to arrange an interview with the Maj Gen – who never spoke to foreign media. We had no reason to doubt our interlocutor – so until the last Baghdad minute we were in this selective waiting list.
As for Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, killed side by side with Soleimani in the Baghdad drone strike, I was part of a small group who spent an afternoon with him in a safe house inside – not outside – Baghdad’s Green Zone in November 2017. My full report is here.
Prof. Mohammad Marandi of the University of Tehran, reflecting on the assassination, told me, “the most important thing is that the Western view on the situation is very Orientalist. They assume that Iran has no real structures and that everything is dependent on individuals. In the West an assassination doesn’t destroy an administration, company, or organization. Ayatollah Khomeini passed away and they said the revolution was finished. But the constitutional process produced a new leader within hours. The rest is history.”
This may go a long way to explain Soleimani geopolitics. He may have been a revolutionary superstar – many across the Global South see him as the Che Guevara of Southwest Asia – but he was most of all a quite articulated cog of a very articulated machine.
The adjunct President of the Iranian Parliament, Hossein Amirabdollahian, told Iranian network Shabake Khabar that Soleimani, two years before the assassination, had already envisaged an inevitable “normalization” between Israel and Persian Gulf monarchies.
At the same time he was also very much aware of the Arab League 2002 position – shared, among others, by Iraq, Syria and Lebanon: a “normalization” cannot even begin to be discussed without an independent – and viable – Palestinian state under 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as capital.
Now everyone knows this dream is dead, if not completely buried. What remains is the usual, dreary slog: the American assassination of Soleimani; the Israeli assassination of top Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh; the relentless, relatively low-intensity Israeli warfare against Iran fully supported by the Beltway; Washington’s illegal occupation of parts of northeast Syria to grab some oil; the perpetual drive for regime change in Damascus; the non-stop demonization of Hezbollah.
Beyond the Hellfire
Tehran has made it very clear that a return to at least a measure of mutual respect between US-Iran involves Washington rejoining the JCPOA with no preconditions, and the end of illegal, unilateral Trump administration sanctions. These parameters are non-negotiable.
Nasrallah, for his part, in a speech in Beirut on Sunday, stressed, “one of the main outcomes of the assassination of General Soleimani and al-Muhandis is the calls made for the expulsion of US forces from the region. Such calls had not been made prior to the assassination. The martyrdom of the resistance leaders set US troops on the track of leaving Iraq.”
This may be wishful thinking, because the military-industrial-security complex will never willingly abandon a key hub of the Empire of Bases.
More important is the fact that the post-Soleimani environment transcends Soleimani.
The Axis of Resistance – Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus-Hezbollah-Ansarullah – instead of collapsing, will keep getting reinforced.
Iran is increasingly solidified as the key node of the New Silk Roads in Southwest Asia: the Iran-China strategic partnership is constantly revitalized by FMs Zarif and Wang Yi, and that includes Beijing turbo-charging its geoeconomic investment in South Pars – the largest gas field on the planet.
Iran, Russia and China will be involved in the reconstruction of Syria – which will also include, eventually, a New Silk Road branch: the Iran-Iraq-Syria-Eastern Mediterranean railway.All that is an interlinked, ongoing process no Hellfires are able to burn.
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