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That quote you presented states that many of the arms held by the Houthis were not supplied by Iran. True or not, this assertion does not support the subsequent that "the Houthis acting very much on their own agenda, rather than as an Iranian proxy".

Even if the Houthis obtain armament from other sources, they may absolutely be following Iranian agenda. Indeed it seems hardly coincidental that their campaign against KSA has been escalating in lockstep with Iran's campaign of violently lashing out against the sanctions imposed upon it.

Moreover, there's very clear evidence that Iran (through IRGC) is supplying the Houthis with their most sophisticated weapons, such as Kornet missiles and indeed drones like those used in this attack:

> The Houthis have repeatedly used a drone that is nearly identical to Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial Company's Ababil-T drone in strikes against Saudi Arabia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthi_movement#IRGC_involveme...

So whether it has other sources to acquire arms seems quite irrelevant. The fact is, the Houthis are using sophisticated Iranian weapons in attacks that are perfectly aligned with Iranian interests (and completely unaligned with identifiable Yemenite interests).

Be careful of uncritically accepting assertions that Iran isn't responsible for the actions of its various proxies. Iran has a strong interest in denying this responsibility, and indeed this denial is the core reason Iran has a proxy strategy to begin with.

> which does rather imply drone / UAv manufacturing is within reach of any state and most groupings

This could totally have been done by someone with a $100 drone, a grenade, and a few weeks of electronics work. Program the drone to wait 1 week, take off, fly to the target, and trigger the grenade. The fact the target was a tank of petrol will do the rest.

Do this 100 times on the same night, and the attacker could have a real impact on a nations economy.

No, half of KSA's oil production capacity was not taken out by a $100 drone carrying a grenade.

That's like saying you can bring down a massive skyscraper by hurling a lit match into its generator room.

Yes, in theory it can hit the right spot at the right time to start a massive chain reaction, but the odds of that actually happening are impossibly low.

Now multiply by the number of facilities that were hit, and it's the odds of winning N different lotteries with N random tickets.

No, this was done with far more sophisticated military-grade attack drones, backed by robust Command and Control system.

Very likely it was done by the HESA Ababil drone that Iran is known to have supplied to the Houthis and was involved in prior Houthi attacks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Ababil

Not the sort of drone you can buy on Amazon for $100.

Yeah, it's common for many to assume Iranian aligned factions such as the Houthis or Hezbollah have no agency, motivations or origins of their own.

The Houthis wouldn't be so keen to wage war on a rich, large, powerful nation like KSA if the Iranians weren't commanding them to do it.

Also notice how dramatically they stepped up their campaign against KSA since Iran launched its aggressive campaign to lash out against economic sanctions.

There's no inherent reasons the Houthis should be launching sophisticated, high-impact attacks on KSA on a weekly basis. This sort of escalation makes no sense within their own geopolitical context, but makes perfect sense when you consider Iran's contexts and regional goals.

Same for Hezbollah group in Lebanon against Israel. All the recent tensions in that conflict can't be explained by the organic interests of the Lebanese nation or people. In fact, a conflict with Israel is against the Lebanese national interest and would lead to great destruction in Lebanon. However, Hezbollah is escalating and building up towards that very conflict.

The vast majority of Hezbollah's budget is contributed by Iran:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funding_of_Hezbollah#Iran

Iran can ill afford to make that investment if they don't get much out of it, and it's pretty accurate to say Hezbollah is acting according to the interest of Iran far more than any other set of interests, including the Lebanese interest.

Hezbollah owes its power and arguably its existence to Iran. It's naive to expect it to act independently of Iranian interests.

Huh? Saudi Arabia intervened in the Yemeni civil war in 2015 and has been doing bombing sorties against the Houthis on a regular basis.

Without the Saudi intervention, the Houthis would most likely not have much of a relationship with Iran at all.

KSA tried to restore the internationally-recognized president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi after the Houthis ousted him. The Houthis had strong ties with Iran prior to this intervention, and in fact the KSA intervention aimed to prevent a Houthi takeover that would bring strong Iranian influence and effective control to Yemen.

Either way, the KSA intervention failed, and the Houthis were able to take over and establish themselves as the dominant power in Yemen, so my assertion stand: they currently have no organic reason to launch a campaign against KSA. Normally a rebel force in this situation would focus on stabilizing their own rule in their country.

The Houthis only control the northwestern part of Yemen, which borders Saudi Arabia. Though that represents a lot of the population, stabilizing control over the entire country is difficult when fighting on two fronts and being bombed, as they’ve been for more than four years, and with Saudi Arabian support to their opposition readily available over the border. The Saudi bombing/blockade/invasion operation “Decisive Storm“ in 2015 failed, but the followup “Restoring Hope” operation is ongoing.

Also, the Houthis had launched around 200 previous drone attacks against Saudi in retaliation; this one was just significantly more successful, as opposed to a new campaign.

In 2015, when the Saudi’s intervened, a UN assessment asserted that there was no evidence of Iran having any “command and control” over the Houthis at the time.

If intervening in the Yemeni civil war on the side of a losing faction and bombing indiscriminately earned Saudi Arabia the Houthi’s enmity, pushed them closer to Iran, and resulted in an effective reprisal, the moral of the story would seem to be that actions have consequences and rashly attempting regional hegemony carries risk.

UN assessments are controversial and, in my opinion, dead wrong and biased. The UN wants the situation to deescalate, which is the opposite of what will happen if Iran's role is acknowledged.

The rest of your comments don't contradict my initial statements. The Saudis tried to keep Hadi in power and failed. The attacks against them by the Houthis are inversely correlated to the Saudi intervention. The Saudis have been scaling back their intervention, while the Houthis are attacking them more and using firepower and weapons they obviously received from Iran.

The Houthis have no reason to keep escalating against KSA now that KSA has virtually stopped their intervention. This would be an insane strategy - a rebel force launching extremely aggressive and escalating attacks against a large and powerful neighbor who stopped fighting them 3 years ago.

The only way you can explain this is that they are doing Iran's bidding. As the weapons are Iranian, this is hardly far-fetched.

Since the elements of the conflict between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis date back to the 1930s, you can safely assume that it will ebb and flow according to each sides’ capabilities and willingness to seek advantage in the absence of a formal accord.

As for the fantasy of Saudi Arabia stopping intervention, they bombed a Houthi site in Dhamar less than two weeks ago in continuation of their bombing campaign of the last four years. That attack, which killed around 100 people, was merely the deadliest in this extremely dirty conflict, and likely sparked the Houthi reprisal.

* deadliest this year

You’ve written the same comment twice. Can you give an example of Iran’s violent lashing out?

Most of Iran's violent actions were done by proxies, exactly as happened in this case. I provided multiple Wikipedia links with sources showing how these proxies are armed and directed by Iran.

Here's another article about their military activity in Iraq: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_intervention_in_Iraq_(...

Besides that, they have been involved recently in multiple actions to seize oil tankers, culminating in the seizure of a British-flagged tanker:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/20/world/middleeast/iran-tan...

They seized other tankers as well, for instance:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49225916

Having just read [1], I‘d say the nation state is maybe not the right level of observation/reasoning in the middle east.

[1] Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need To Know About Global Politics

Quite a few nations in the Middle East were never organically formed. They were carved and cobbled together by various agreements, such as Sykes–Picot. The resulting creation contains an unstable combination of factions and tribes that are often hostile to each other. Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, and Iraq are all great examples of that.

Many of these nations are now failed states, containing factions that are more powerful than any sort of central government or military. Chief examples of that are Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.

However, there are ME nations-states that do have a strong and coherent central government. Egypt, KSA, and Iran are examples of that.

So a more accurate model would be a mixture of failed artificial states interacting with states that are more functional and coherent.

When I read stuff that doesn't smell like propaganda it sounds more like the Iranian's don't want this conflict. Because they are playing a long game where their odds of winning are high.

Without Iran, there is no Houthi force that matters. Iranian ships provide supplies. Iranian advisors train. Strategy is coordinated by Iran.

https://intpolicydigest.org/2018/04/13/iran-developing-houth...