But The Guardian report last Friday suggests the Iranians might be more interested in recruiting spies and agents to help the Islamic Republic than in helping Yemeni rebels to take over the country.
The Guardian tells the story of Jemajem, a young and militant leader of a band of separatists who want southern Yemen to once again become an independent state.
Jemajem said he was approached by a man working for what the man called a “friendly country” known for its international support for revolutionary causes. That country turned out to be the Islamic Republic.
Jemajem was asked to gather a group of fellow Hirak activists in Aden and a week later they were flown to Damascus, where they met two officials from the Iranian embassy. According to Jemajem and other activists who traveled with him, the Iranians told the Yemenis they would support demands for federalism within Yemen, but not the separate state that the Hirak group was calling for.
“I told them the people want independence,” said Jemajem. “It’s not me who decides; my people will condemn me if I agree to federalism.”
Days later the Iranians came back and told the Yemenis they would have to go to Tehran to meet more senior officials. They arranged for the 15 Yemenis to fly to Tehran without visas on an Iran Air flight. There was no one else on the plane, the activists said, and when they landed they were whisked through security without their passports being stamped.
From then on, they were treated more like detainees than negotiating partners, the Yemenis said. They were taken by bus to a hotel and only allowed to leave under escort, to go to meetings with Iranian officials.
“All the officials we met used aliases,” a female member of the delegation told The Guardian. “They didn’t tell us who they worked for but they asked us many questions.” The Iranians often spoke to them in near-perfect Arabic.
“They said Iran would invest in infrastructure projects in the south,” said Jemajem. “They said they would build a hospital and pay salaries to the activists. They said they would give me – personally – a few million dollars in the beginning to start paying salaries. Most importantly, they said they would send us weapons and train people,” he said.
According to a senior Hirak activist who did not want to be named, the Iranians were looking for a foothold in the peninsula.
“The Sunni monarchies, such as the Saudis and Qataris, are supporting the Sunnis in Syria and turning a blind eye to the Shia of Bahrain, and the Iranians are looking for a foothold in the region to pressure the Saudis and to be close to the straits of Bab al-Mandeb in case there is war with the Americans,” he said.
The narrow Bab al-Mandeb, where the Red Sea meets the Gulf of Aden off Yemen, is a conduit for all shipping going through the Suez Canal, and about 30 percent of the world’s oil passes through it.
Young men were leaving quietly to train in Iran, the senior activist told The Guardian. “They leave in small numbers. I don’t think the Iranians are training an army there – we don’t need military training. I think they are recruiting them to be future intelligence agents here. But why do you need to recruit an agent in a revolution? Help the revolution and the whole people will come and help you.”
Before 1990, Yemen consisted of two separate states. When British forces left the south in 1967, Marxists took over and it became known as the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen. In 1990, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who ruled the north, negotiated a deal with the southern regime to unify the country under a power-sharing arrangement. The southerners soon had second thoughts, though, and in 1994 fighting broke out.
Saleh’s forces defeated the south in a matter of weeks and then consolidated their grip over the territory. The result was increased corruption, with the northern elites picking off the best jobs and land. Southerners point to swaths of prime coastal real estate that is fenced off. They say government officials from the south were all sent home and replaced by people from the north.
Jemajem joined one band of independence fighters, Hirak, but was soon frustrated at its lack of effectiveness.
It was that frustration that Jemajem and his friends to Tehran. “We went to Iran with a sense of shame,” said the woman activist, “because all doors were closed in our faces and only the Iranians offered to help.”
What did they say to the Iranians in the end? “We said no,” said Jemajem. The Iranians attached a key condition: that the supply of guns would not be controlled by Hirak but by the Houthi rebels in the north – Shia insurgents who have been fighting the central government for almost a decade and are widely believed to be backed by Iran.
“They told us the Houthis would deliver the weapons and the money,” said Jemajem. “We are trying to liberate our country from the northerners – I am not going to be under the control of another northerner. We realized then that the Iranians want us to be pawns,” he said. “I refused to take their money.”
