The United Kingdom has announced it will deploy Royal Air Force Typhoon fighter jets to help defend Saudi Arabia from missile and drone attacks by Yemen’s Houthis, the armed group also known as Ansar Allah (Arabic for Supporters of God). The jets will play a “defensive role”, the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) said in a statement on Tuesday, adding that they will not carry out attacks against the Iranian-backed armed group. The move comes amid heavy fighting between the Houthis and Yemen’s internationally recognised government, which is backed by Saudi Arabia.
In recent weeks, the Houthis have carried out missile and drone attacks against the kingdom, including oil facilities and Riyadh’s main airport, while the Saudi-led coalition supporting the Yemeni government has launched air attacks on Houthi positions. The UK’s decision to send jets to assist Saudi Arabia marks just the latest chapter in a partnership that stretches back more than a century, to a treaty signed during the First World War, years before the Saudi kingdom was founded. So what is the UK sending, and how did the two countries become so closely bound?
Fighter jets, an A400M transport aircraft and advisers. The ministry said it was also extending air-to-air refuelling, which it previously agreed to provide for Saudi air operations, including those to degrade Houthi military targets in Yemen. In December 1915, Sir Percy Cox, a senior British official in the Gulf, concluded the Treaty of Darin with King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, then ruler of Nejd in central Arabia, according to India Office records held by the UK’s National Archives.
In return, he allied with Britain against the Ottoman Empire, and Britain backed him with cash and weapons. In May 1927, Britain signed a new treaty with him at Jeddah, according to an India Office memorandum. King Abdulaziz founded the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.
In May 1966, Saudi Arabia signed contracts to buy 40 Lightning fighter jets and 25 jet trainers from the British Aircraft Corporation, along with a radar system, according to a US Department of State memo from the time. Even then, Yemen was part of the picture. In 1962, the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen was overthrown in a military coup and the Yemen Arab Republic was established.
Egypt sent troops to back the republican government, while Saudi Arabia and Jordan armed and funded royalist forces trying to restore the Imam. By 1966, the civil war had reached a stalemate. Meanwhile, Britain was facing rebellion from Soviet- and Egypt-backed nationalist groups over its control of Aden and southern Yemen.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
