World News

Yemen has played a relativity small role in the affairs of the Arab world in recent years. However over the past few months this country this has been in the news for all the wrong reasons.
Yemen has had a long history of civil strife that is caused by tribal and religious tensions. These tensions have come back to the fore in the shape of a conflict that is increasingly taking on the form of a civil war.
The two protagonists in this conflict is predominately Sunni led rulinggovernment which is battling Houthi rebels who belong to the Shia branch of Islam.
The Houthi rebels it has been claimed are backed by the Iran have made rapid gains against Government forces. With the Yemeni capital Sanaa having already fallen to the rebels the Houthi have now advanced further south and are now posed to take the financial center of Aden.
This move has concerned the Saudi Government enough to take action joining the fight against the rebels. With the battle for Yemen is now increasingly turning between a proxy war between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran, the government in Riyadh felt the need to intervene.
The Saudi move has sent the price of Oil spiraling higher. Yemen is an insignificant producer of Oil with a share of under 0.2% of global output. However Yemen and the port city of Aden has a controls one of the most strategically sensitive locations for global shipping. This being the Bab el-Mandeb strait. A closure of this straight would stop tankers heading from the Persian Gulf to the Suez Canal.
Saudi Arabia has for some time tried to dominate and push down the price of Oil. However history tells us that no one nation can dominate and control its own destiny all of the time.
The crisis is Iraq and Syria has created a Shia dominated area to the north of the Arabian peninsula whilst the events in Yemen threaten to create a Shia led administration in the south.
With the Saudi’s now feeling increasingly encircled by allies of Iran can the Saudi government continue to sustain a policy of low oil prices as it claims indefinitely?
Below are today’s major news releases.