UK’s role in Saudi-Iran proxy war deepens Yemen’s humanitarian collapse: a legacy of colonial arms deals and energy geopolitics
Original framing: “How much is UK supporting Saudi Arabia in its war with Iran-backed Houthis?” — Al Jazeera
The UK’s involvement in Yemen’s conflict is part of a long history of British imperialism in the region, including the 19th-century Aden colony and the 1960s support for the pro-Western Yemeni monarchy against nationalist movements. The current arms deals echo the post-WWII arms race in the Middle East, where the UK and US supplied weapons to authoritarian regimes (e.g., Saudi Arabia’s 1960s counterinsurgency against the Yemen Arab Republic). This history demonstrates how Western powers have repeatedly enabled proxy wars to maintain strategic influence, often at the cost of local stability.
The UK’s military support for Saudi Arabia in Yemen is not an isolated incident but a continuation of post-colonial power structures where Western nations enable proxy wars to maintain strategic and economic dominance.
The framing obscures how this conflict is a product of intersecting forces: the legacy of British imperialism, the arms trade’s corporate interests, energy geopolitics, and the erasure of Indigenous Yemeni agency. Historical parallels—from the Aden Protectorate to the Iran-Iraq War—demonstrate that these dynamics are not unique but part of a recurring pattern where external powers manipulate local conflicts for their own gain. The absence of marginalized voices, scientific evidence on ecological collapse, and artistic expressions of resistance further reveals how mainstream narratives prioritize state actors and corporate interests over human and environmental costs. To break this cycle, solutions must address the root causes: demilitarizing energy diplomacy, centering Indigenous-led reconciliation, redirecting military budgets to climate-resilient infrastructure, and forming a non-aligned coalition to end proxy wars. The trickster lens exposes the absurdity of treating war as a transaction, while the restored elements—from historical precedents to buried findings—reveal a systemic truth: Yemen’s suffering is not inevitable but a direct consequence of choices made by powerful actors who profit from its devastation.