Yemen faces an existential threat, says UN special envoy

Yemen faces an existential threat in the wake of claims by Houthi rebels they fired the drones that caused major devastation at two Saudi oil facilities, Martin Griffiths, the UN special envoy for Yemen, said.

According to Griffiths, even if that claim of responsibility is debunked, and the source of the drone attack proves to be Iranian-backed forces based in Iraq, as the US currently claims, the Houthi claim gave some credence to those contending “there is an axis between between Houthis and Iran”.

Saudi Arabia, locked in a five-year war to dislodge the Houthis from Yemen’s capital Sana’a, has long argued that Iran does not simply back, but effectively directs, the Houthi rebellion.

Griffiths warned the episode came as Yemen already faced “the risk of fragmenting and threatening its own existence which is a massive threat to stability in the region, and frankly even to shipping lanes”.

Related: Everything you need to know about the Saudi Arabia oil attacks

He added: “In these circumstances what we need to do is waste no more time, but to get to the table to get the political agreement in place to end that conflict”.

He pointed out the attack on the Saudi-owned Aramco oil facilities in Abqaiq and Khurai came on top of the emergence of a secessionist movement in southern Yemen that is taking territory from the Saudi-backed unity government. Griffiths had been reluctant to include the secessionists the Southern Transitional Council in the talks process.

But the UN envoy will call for all sides to come together to hold wide-ranging political talks on the country’s future, moving on from the narrow focus on security troop withdrawals in the Red Sea port of Hodeidah, the primary focus of his diplomacy since an outline agreement was reached in Stockholm last December.

But diplomats fear Griffiths’s appeal may be ignored if Saudi Arabia joins the US in attributing responsibility for the attack to a nexus between the Houthis and Iran. The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia’s allies in the war to dislodge the Houthis, have signalled they are withdrawing some forces from Yemen, and there was hope that Saudi might wind down an unwinnable war.

Speaking to the BBC, Griffiths said he could not personally attribute responsibility for the attack, or substantiate the Houthi claim that they, rather than Iranian-backed rebels, fired the drones into Saudi Arabia.

He said: “I really hope the US are right that it did not come from Yemen because it would make it more difficult than even what we are are now facing to resolve the conflict in Yemen.”

For the Houthi claim of responsibility to be true, their armed drones would have had to fly over nearly 1,000km (621 miles) from Houthi-controlled territory in northwest Yemen across Saudi Arabia to reach their targets in Abqaiq.

Few doubt the Houthis’ drones capabilities have grown more sophisticated since they first claimed in February 2017 they were using drones for reconnaissance, surveying, assessment and early warning missions. But their basic drones do not have this range.

In August Yemen’s operations command centre displayed the Samad-3 and the Qasef 2K drones, both of which had not been previously publicly displayed. It said the Samad-3 drone had a range of up to 1,700km and claimed the drones were used to attack the Abu Dhabi Airport and Dubai Airport, as well as in several other recent drone and missile attacks targeting Saudi Arabia’s southern regions of Khamis Mushait and Jizan.

Even if the US is right, and this attack was mounted from Southern Iraq, the drone threat posed by Yemen’s Houthi forces is not going away. If the Saudis baulk at reprisals against Iran, they have proved over four years of war they will not, in the interests of their own perceived security, show the same restraint in Yemen.