Interception of Houthi missiles by Saudi air defense, video from Tariq A channel
Sunday evening in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) turned out to be anything but a day off for the country's residents and military. This is not the first time rebels from the Shiite Houthi tribe have fired into the kingdom. But seven missiles targeting four cities at once is a serious challenge.
According to the spokesman for the Saudi coalition, Colonel Turki Al-Maliki, the shells targeted four cities: Jizan (two strikes), Nayran (one strike) and Khamis Mushait (one strike) near the Yemeni border, as well as the KSA capital Er -Riyad (three strikes). All missiles were destroyed by Saudi air defenses.
In addition to the scale of the attack, yesterday’s incident was notable for the fact that it led to the death of a civilian for the first time. Fragments of the downed rocket fell on residential areas, leading to the destruction of “civilian objects” and the death of one native of Egypt, the statement said.
Falling rocket debris, video from Dhafer Alduhayim channel
Unprecedented attack by Houthis likely to result in retaliatory strikes Saudi Arabia. The kingdom typically responds with heavy airstrikes on the Yemeni capital Sanaa. The Houthis' previous major attacks were on December 19, when they attempted to target the Yamama Palace Hotel, and on November 4, at Riyadh International Airport.
The Yemeni civil war began in 2014 following social protests in Houthi-dominated areas. The latter were outraged by the reduction in subsidies for petroleum products, which resulted in a doubling of gasoline prices. Having failed to achieve the resignation of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the rebels moved to the capital Sanaa and captured it in January 2015. Hadi fled south to Aden, but a month later the Houthis launched an assault on that port city as well.
In March, Saudi Arabia intervened. Allied with Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, Egypt and other Arab countries, the coalition air force began bombing Houthi positions and drove them out of Aden. The military operations of the Saudi coalition led to a humanitarian disaster and the outbreak of a cholera epidemic that affected almost a million people.
Saudi Arabia accuses Iran of supporting the Houthis, to whom, according to Riyadh, Tehran supplies weapons. I must say, not without reason. In December, rebel leader spokesman Mohammed Abdul Salam tweeted that they had launched Burqan 2H ballistic missiles at Riyadh. Burqan missiles are a modified version of the Iranian Scud missile. The head of the Houthis Ansar Allah, Abdel Malek al-Houthi, in November threatened to inflict painful blows on the KSA if it continued the blockade of Yemen. Tehran denies transferring weapons to its allies in Yemen.
The President of the Middle East Institute, Yevgeny Satanovsky, considers the Houthi missile attacks natural in a situation where the Saudi coalition is waging a war in Yemen, which has led to the death of tens of thousands of civilians.
Saudi Arabia is bombing Yemen. Destroys civilians and infrastructure. The Houthis have struck a number of cities, including Riyadh and the port of Riyadh, and they are demonstrating that they can harass the Saudis even far from the border."
- Satanovsky said in an interview with Tsargrad.
The Houthi conflict with KSA is part of a regional confrontation between the Sunni monarchies of the Persian Gulf, led by Saudi Arabia, and Iran. Tehran has great influence over the region through Shiite minorities in Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain and Yemen, which worries the Saudis. Washington’s unilateral support for anti-Iranian forces also adds fuel to the fire. The latest reshuffles in the State Department and the US National Security Council have strengthened the position of those in the Donald Trump administration who, like the head of the White House, intend to break the nuclear deal with Iran. On March 23, the State Department approved a deal to supply the Saudis with weapons worth $1 billion. Human rights activists fear that American weapons will be used by the kingdom against the Houthis.
The cessation of Egyptian flights and the evacuation of Russian tourists are actions that few expected.
The turning point came after a conversation between the Russian president and the British prime minister and amazed everyone with its scale and speed - stop flights, take people out, deliver luggage on separate planes, and support travel agencies suffering losses from the budget.
It will take at least a month to evacuate, since there are from 45 to 70 thousand Russians in Egypt, and they must complete their rest.
The expenses are huge, but once they were spent on them, it means that the situation demanded it and it was impossible to wait any longer.
Speculations immediately appeared online as to what this meant.
Some believe that after the last Russian tourist will leave Egypt A military operation will begin to destroy terrorist bases in the Sinai Peninsula, which Moscow could have agreed on with Cairo in advance.
By the way, the Egyptian authorities have been fighting local ISIS for a long time and without much success, so help Russian aviation they will have to fit.
But in order for the militants to not be able to take revenge on Russian citizens, they should not remain in Egypt.
Other Internet users, on the contrary, believe that IS has nothing to do with it, and see future events in a different light.
They point out that carrying out such terrorist attacks is not IS style. Their fate could have been allowed if the plane had been shot down by a missile.
But it fell to pieces at an altitude of 9,000 meters, and any portable MANPADS that, theoretically, they might have are capable of operating against targets at an altitude of 3-4 thousand meters, no more. Therefore, there was a bomb quietly planted on the plane.
Until now, ISIS has not dealt with such matters.
They recklessly cut off the heads of their victims, burn them alive in iron cages, or crush them with tanks, and they film it all on camera and post it on the Internet. In a word, they work for the public, trying to cause maximum horror among their opponents.
But they are not keen on developing secret operations. Although they still hastened to get close to the plane crash.
However, they did it somehow hesitantly and unconvincingly, which caused great doubts among everyone who saw the dedicated relevant videos.
Throwing a bomb rather resembles the handwriting of the special services.
But whose? And here we come to the most interesting part of the question.
“The people most dissatisfied with the Russian military operation in Syria are Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey., - is listed in an article on the AIS website. - It is almost impossible that the terrorist attack was carried out by the Turks. Despite the friction between Moscow and Ankara on foreign policy issues, our countries are very closely connected economically. In addition, the organizer of sabotage understands: there is always a risk that everything will be revealed. And the murder of 240 citizens of a generally friendly country is a 100 percent “casus belli” (casus belli - a reason to start a war). I don’t think that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dreams of being at war with Russian Federation" , says the author of the publication. And he develops the idea further.
Another thing is Saudi Arabia.
This is the most complete absolutist monarchy in the world, where the kings from the Saud dynasty decide everything.
The current king Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud very old (80 years old) and, as they say, not entirely adequate. And his relatives are waging a merciless behind-the-scenes struggle among themselves for the throne. It is difficult to understand who makes decisions there.
On the other hand, the Saudis are a long-standing and main source of the continuous war of all against all in the Middle East, and this, the further, the more, irritates serious players in world politics, including the United States, which seems to be allies of Riyadh, but in Lately they began to shun him because of the wild morals within the regime (death penalties for adultery and homosexuality).
In addition, some experts believe that it was the Saudis who dropped oil prices in order to destroy shale oil production in the United States.
And they succeeded - only 37% of wells operating on shale remain in America, compared to the level at the beginning of 2014. And their developers suffered losses of a trillion dollars.
It is very likely that Washington will only be happy if Saudi Arabia ceases to exist in its current form and does not interfere with anyone who intends to do so.
Well, at most, he will express verbal protest and indignation.
If we assume that the destruction of the plane was the work of the Saudi intelligence services (themselves or through Al-Qaeda), then Russia will have to respond.
And it's not that difficult to do.
Could hit Saudi Arabia Caspian flotilla and the Black Sea Fleet - with Kalibr cruise missiles, which recently amazed the world community.
Then the Tu-160, Tu-95 and Tu-22 aircraft will be supplemented with Kh-55 and Kh-555 missiles with a range of 2000-2500 km.
That is, planes and ships can cover targets in Saudi Arabia with long-range missiles, while themselves being completely safe far beyond the range of Saudi aviation and air defense.
There are also rumors that Russian Iskander ground-based missile systems are only listed as “short-range” systems of 500 km, but in fact can fly 2000 km. But you can do without them.
The fleet and long-range aviation will cope on their own, destroying key objects of the military infrastructure of Saudi Arabia: radars, control posts and air defense launch systems; airfields, headquarters, communications centers, weapons depots and seaports.
And if oil production facilities are affected, then this will only be beneficial - prices will soar.
The foreign press also admits a similar development of events, although it does not study everything in detail.
The West expects an “epic response” from Moscow if the version of a terrorist attack on board a Russian airliner is confirmed, writes The Washington Times.
Vladimir Putin has gained a reputation among the Russian population as a man of action who does not offend Russians.
The Russian public will not remain silent and will not allow this crime of the Islamic State banned in Russia to go unpunished.
The columnist predicts further large-scale military actions by Russia.
This will be costly, but Moscow has no choice but to act, and Russians have long been accustomed to enduring difficulties for the good of the state, the author of the publication concludes.
Alexander Romanov
Nowadays it is not customary to issue ultimatums - wars begin without any ceremony. “I’m coming at you!” – Grand Duke Svyatoslav Igorevich once threatened the Khazars. “Imma adgaggandin!” (“I’m coming!”) - the leader of the Huns, Atilla, warned the Romans.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, unlike the ancients, expresses himself much more verbosely and streamlinedly: “The terrorist attack over Sinai Peninsula was an attack on Russian citizens, which is tantamount to an attack on the state. The right to self-defense will be realized by all available means – both political and military.” What is this, an ultimatum? War? But who the hell did we announce it to?
Our further actions, as President Vladimir Putin said, will be based on Article 51 of the UN Charter. This article, if anyone is not aware, talks about the right of any state to individual or collective self-defense in the event of an attack on it. So we are talking about war. It is about war, with blood and corpses, and not about something conventionally vegetarian like a “special operation of a limited contingent.” If only we could understand who we are fighting with. Neither the President nor the Minister of Foreign Affairs specifically announced: here is our enemy! You'll have to use your imagination and logic.
We will hit those who financed the explosion of airbus a321
Russia is preparing to strike at Saudi Arabia and, possibly, Qatar, says former adviser to the Russian President Andrei Illarionov. “Engagement of the advanced group of Russian Armed Forces Syrian foothills, an extremely timely and effective series of terrorist attacks in Egypt and France, the triumphant holding of the G20 summit in Antalya, the de facto demonstrated paralysis of NATO, the acquisition of an important ally in France, the reassurance of the West by the beginning of the exchange with the US military of data on ongoing operations against prohibited in Russian IS and the proposal to restructure the Ukrainian debt, combat deployment and practical testing of the actions of the fleet and long-range aviation in the Middle Eastern theater of operations - all this prepared and made possible the implementation of a strategic operation to strike military, infrastructure, and energy facilities on the territory of Saudi Arabia and Qatar ", explains Illarionov. The task set by Putin to the security forces on November 2 (“everything must be done to create an objective picture of what happened, so that we know what happened and react accordingly”) had already been completed by November 16. And the president sets a new task: “Find and punish the criminals. We must do this without a statute of limitations, know them all by name. We will look for them wherever they are hiding. We will find them anywhere on the planet and punish them.”
It was here that the 51st Article of the UN Charter was mentioned for the first time. A strange, admittedly, mention. If we are talking about continuing attacks on extremist positions in Syria, then Article 51 is not needed for this. We are bombing Syria in accordance with the request of the legitimate president of this country. But if new strikes have to be launched not on Syria, but on some other country or several countries, it will be impossible to do without Article 51. So, Putin mentioned her for a reason? Do you remember what our president said at the recent G20 summit in Antalya? “We need to stop ways of financing terrorist activities. Funding, as we have established, comes from 40 countries, including from the G20 countries. One of these countries is definitely Saudi Arabia, the other is Qatar.
On this topic
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani blamed the US-Saudi Arabia coalition for starting the conflict in the region. He also said that Washington accuses Tehran of attacking Saudi territory in order to increase international pressure on the country.
The Americans will not help their satellites
Have you ever wondered why the FSB suddenly set an unprecedentedly high reward for identifying those who ordered the terrorist attack in the skies over Sinai - as much as $50 million? After all, terrorists are handed over by their accomplices for much less money. The hope is probably that there are individuals and organizations in the world who can provide convincing arguments for the involvement of Saudi Arabia and, possibly, Qatar, in Russian Airbus explosion, Andrei Illarionov believes. And it will not be the conditional IS terrorists or al-Qaeda banned in the Russian Federation that will have to answer for the terrorist attack over Egypt, but completely specific countries and their political leadership.
The possible growth of the Syrian conflict and its transformation into a full-fledged war, no longer with anonymous terrorists, but with well-defined countries, is also evidenced by recent requests for military assistance from official representatives of Iraq and Lebanon to the leadership of our country. Moreover, both Iraqi and Lebanese leaders imply military assistance against Qatar rather than against Saudi Arabia. And if you consider that our Airbus in Egypt was most likely blown up on order from Qatar (see the last issue of “Our Version”), the future enemy is clearly visible. Orientalist Evgeny Satanovsky is generally convinced that the trail leads straight to Qatar, to the top leadership of this country, who thinks that he has some kind of score to settle with Russia.
But it is known that Saudi Arabia, and especially Qatar, are America’s satellites in the Middle East. Will Russia really risk fighting against them without fear of a reaction from Washington? There is obviously a subtlety here: pay attention to how the United States reacted to the tragic events in Paris. The leadership of this country assessed the tragedy as an act of war and demanded to “activate” Article 5 of the UN Charter - as was the case after the terrorist attacks overseas on September 11, 2001. But quite unexpectedly for Paris, NATO allies refused to take “actions of a preventive or coercive nature” against the possible organizers of the terrorist attack. And France - seemingly a full partner and ally - was essentially abandoned. Perhaps Moscow has convincing evidence that their partners will also “dump” Saudi Arabia and Qatar at a critical moment?
They are trying to provoke Russia to start a war
And then the further scenario will be like this: Russia will declare Qatar and Saudi Arabia as countries sponsoring international terrorism (Putin has already hinted at this), and in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter, our military will legally be able to carry out retaliation operations aimed at the military, infrastructure and energy facilities of these countries. Well, Washington will be able to react in the usual manner: announce that Moscow is again taking on too much. However, it cannot be ruled out that the Americans will behave more harshly. The other day, several well-informed public figures (in particular, Viktor Alksnis and Anatoly Nesmiyan) announced that, according to their information, during the G20 meeting in Antalya, Barack Obama allegedly presented an ultimatum to Vladimir Putin: Russia must leave Donbass and return Ukraine Crimea. “The ultimatum was presented in a very harsh form,” emphasized Victor Alksnis. Does this mean that the United States is also not averse to fighting and is looking for a reason to launch a military campaign against our country?
Such questions might not have arisen if the political leadership of our country had expressed itself less vaguely and ambiguously. Just the other day, Vladimir Putin, on the sidelines of the G20 summit, met with the King of Saudi Arabia, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud - and they talked quite peacefully. Over the past year, ties between Moscow and Riyadh have strengthened significantly—unexpectedly for Washington. And the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov was generally greeted on the Arabian Peninsula with special honors, given only to a select few. So, perhaps, statements about a possible war with the sponsors of the IS banned in the Russian Federation (among which, by the way, not only Qatar, but also the Turks, the Pakistanis, and even the Americans) are just a clumsy attempt to quarrel us with the Saudis, made by consistent critics of the current Russian leadership? Well, the smoke from fried facts is a good veil, behind which real problems like inflation or the depreciation of the ruble are not visible. Don't you find it?
Evgeny Satanovsky, orientalist:
– The vast majority of wars are based on the economic interests of the parties. Doha and Riyadh have serious reasons to sort out their relations with Moscow. Russia and Qatar have strong gas competition in the European market, and in the case of Saudi Arabia, the reason for the existing disagreements is oil. I predicted three years ago that the most interesting and unpredictable events related to Qatar await us. There is no doubt who ordered and paid for the terrorist attack in the skies over Sinai - Qatar did it. And at the level of the country's leadership. If the president, when speaking about retribution, meant Qatar, I would not be surprised. I just suggest thinking about what kind of retribution could come out of Russia. Let's take a look at what's on our borders: in Uzbekistan - the Islamic movement IMU, banned in the Russian Federation, radical Islamists in Tajikistan, Kyrgyz criminals, burdened with the ideas of jihad... The borders between them and us are actually open. And in Russia there is one and only region in which there are definitely no cells of Islamic radicals. This is Chukotka.
