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Riyadh ups the ante by joining Yemen war
Saudi Arabia's entry into Yemen's war against northern Shiite rebels has dramatically increased the stakes in a smoldering powder keg of conflicts in the Red Sea and Horn of Africa region, a key oil artery.
Riyadh's Nov. 4 commitment of ground and air forces along the border with Yemen's Saada province, the storm center in the five-year-old conflict between President Ali Abdullah Saleh and Houthi tribesmen, opened another front in the ever-widening proxy war between Sunni-led Saudi Arabia and Shiite-dominated Iran.
According to Western security sources, Saudis intelligence is already involved in clandestine operations against the Tehran regime and its surrogates in Iraq, Lebanon and the unruly border regions of Iran itself in a bid to counter the Islamic republic's expansionist ambitions.
Riyadh's decision to launch military operations to support Saleh's poorly equipped and poorly led armed forces underlined how shaky Saleh's position has become as he grapples with an unprecedented array of threats.