Al-Mashat’s statements: Houthi threat to bomb the liberated ports after acknowledging the failure of the plan to disrupt them
English - Sunday 03 September 2023 الساعة 06:51 pm
Aden, NewsYemen, exclusive:
Statements by the leader of the Houthi group, Mahdi Al-Mashat, revealed the group’s intentions to target the liberated ports, following its recent acknowledgment of the failure of its attempts to disrupt them in favor of the Hodeidah ports under its control.
Al-Mashat, in a speech he delivered in an expanded meeting in Amran Governorate on Wednesday, claimed that there was an attempt by the legitimate government to export large quantities of natural gas produced in Ma’rib Governorate, through the port of Aden, and that his group prevented this after threatening to bomb two ships that approached the port.
Al-Mashat claimed that the "Cinemargent" ship and the "Bolivar" ship came to the port of Aden the week before last to transport forty thousand tons of gas, and that they retreated more than four times, after the companies that owned the two ships were informed that they would be beaten if they entered the port.
In the absence of any government response to these allegations and the Houthi threats to attack the port of Aden, Al-Mashat’s statements raised controversy and fears that they were merely justifications for targeting the liberated commercial ports after targeting oil ports late last year, which led to the cessation of the oil export process until today.
Experts and specialists question the validity of the Houthi and its media’s claims about exporting natural gas through the oil port in Aden, as it requires transporting it through special pipes and shipping it to ships through a special port for this process, such as the port of Balhaf in Shabwa Governorate, which was launched in 2005 as the largest investment project in Yemen at a cost. It amounted to $4.5 billion, but it is currently suspended by the French company Total, which is managing the project and stopped work on it after the outbreak of war in March 2015.
While activists and journalists confirmed that Al-Mashat’s allegations about the “Cinemargent” ship and the “Bolivar” ship approaching the port of Aden the week before last were incorrect, by returning to the most important international sites specialized in tracking the movement of ships globally, which indicate that the first ship was then in the port of Port Sudan, west of the country. Sudan until August 24 and left, heading to the port of Khor Al-Zubair in Iraq, where it is expected to arrive at the end of this week.
While the other ship, “Bolivar,” moved during the second half of August between the port of Umm al-Qasr in Iraq, and the ports of Sohar and Duqm in the Sultanate of Oman, meaning that it and the ship, “Cinemargent,” did not approach the port of Aden as Al-Mashat claims. In addition, information about the two ships indicates that their capacity is not sufficient to transport the amount he mentioned, which is 40 thousand tons of gas.
These facts clearly indicate that the Houthi group is seeking to pave the way in advance to target the port of Aden and other liberated ports by starting to fabricate these lies, especially after its official acknowledgment of its failure to disrupt its activity by forcing merchants to import through the ports of Hodeidah under its control.
This failure is in addition to the group's clear annoyance with the government's recent step to sign an agreement with the United Nations to reduce the cost of marine insurance for ships arriving at liberated ports, which, from its point of view, will constitute a strong blow to its plan to disrupt the activity of these ports.
Observers do not rule out that the Houthi group’s threat to target the port of Aden is an attempt by the group to undermine the government’s move with the United Nations to reduce the cost of maritime insurance by creating security risks around the liberated ports, and that it will be targeted at any time by strikes by its drones, which requires - according to observers - a firm stance by the government in response to these Houthi threats.
