Yemeni Prime Minister Khaled Bahah said on Wednesday that his administration was prepared to resign over the growing interference into governing by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
Reuters reports that Bahah issued his threat after “Houthi rebels who control the capital Sanaa raided state institutions and sacked public officials.”
Armed Houthis on Wednesday prevented the director of Hodeida port, Yemen’s main Red Sea harbor where most of the country’s food imports arrive, reaching his office, with a view to replacing him, port officials said.
“The staff were so angry that they walked out in a demonstration and closed off the port,” one official said by telephone.
Separately, about 20 Houthi fighters broke into the state-run Safer oil company in Sanaa, kicked out the director and his deputy and locked their offices, company officials said.
Additionally, “[t]he Houthis had already sacked four provincial governors, the editor of the main state newspaper, al-Thawra, and the commander of the special forces.”
The Houthis are allied with Yemen’s former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was ousted during the revolutions of the “Arab spring,” and is seeking a return to power. A senior Yemini politician was quoted by Reuters as saying, “it is clear that the Houthis, together with Ali Abdullah Saleh, are completing their (Sept.) 21 coup,” referring to the day the Houthis took over Yemen’s capital, Sanaa.
Soon after seizing control of Sanaa, the Houthis blocked the formation of a new government in Yemen.
The Houthi rebels are backed by Iran. A Reuters report on Monday revealed the direct ties between the rebels and the Islamic Republic.
A senior Iranian official told Reuters that the Quds Force, the external arm of the Revolutionary Guard, had a “few hundred” military personnel in Yemen who train Houthi fighters.
He said about 100 Houthis had traveled to Iran this year for training at a Revolutionary Guards base near the city of Qom. It was not immediately possible to verify this claim.
The official said there were a dozen Iranian military advisers in Yemen, and the pace of money and arms getting to the Houthis had increased since their seizure of Sanaa.
Though Houthi officials deny that they’re backed by Iran, an Iranian authority has openly boasted that the Islamic Republic now controls four Arab capitals – Sanaa, Beirut, Damascus and Baghdad. In addition to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hezbollah, the Lebanese Iranian-backed terrorist group has been reportedly fighting with the Houthis.
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