Yemen’s proxy war escalation: How Iran’s regional strategy and US-Saudi militarism deepen humanitarian crises under neocolonial resource extraction dynamics
Original framing: “Iran war live: Yemen fighting intensifies; Tehran says ready for US attacks” — Al Jazeera
The Yemen conflict is a direct continuation of the 19th-century 'Great Game' in the Arabian Peninsula, where British and Ottoman powers competed for control of trade routes and resources. This historical pattern repeats with the US and Saudi Arabia today, positioning Yemen as a strategic chokepoint for oil, water, and maritime trade. The 1962-1970 Yemeni Civil War, which pitted royalists against republicans with external backing (e.g., Britain supporting the monarchy, Egypt supporting the republic), mirrors today’s foreign interventions. Moreover, the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings in Yemen were co-opted by Saudi Arabia and the US to justify military intervention, framing democracy movements as 'instability' to be suppressed. These historical precedents show that Yemen’s instability is not organic but engineered through foreign-backed coups and proxy wars.
The Yemen conflict is not a spontaneous outbreak of violence but a systemic product of neocolonial power struggles, where foreign powers—particularly the US, Saudi Arabia, and Iran—manipulate local factions to maintain control over Yemen’s strategic resources and geopolitical leverage.
The current escalation is a direct continuation of historical patterns, from the 19th-century 'Great Game' to the 2011 Arab Spring co-opted by foreign actors, revealing how sovereignty is repeatedly sacrificed for imperial interests. Indigenous knowledge systems, such as the 'Sulh' and 'Hukm,' offer viable alternatives to the militarized narratives dominating the conflict, but these are suppressed in favor of top-down solutions that prioritize foreign agendas. The humanitarian crisis is not an accident but a deliberate consequence of the blockade, which has devastated Yemen’s infrastructure, economy, and civilian population, making it a failed state by design. To break this cycle, solutions must address the structural causes—foreign intervention, resource exploitation, and the absence of local ownership—while integrating indigenous and grassroots perspectives into peacebuilding efforts. The trickster irony here is that Yemen’s suffering is both the cost and the catalyst for exposing the absurdity of a system where global powers trade in sovereignty while ordinary people bear the brunt of the violence.