US ‘fires Patriot missiles’ in support of UAE during Yemen retaliation

The United States says it fired “Patriot interceptors” in support of the United Arab Emirates during the Yemeni defense forces’ most recent bout of retaliation against the UAE.

The US military used “Patriot interceptors to … [support] efforts by the armed forces of the UAE,” the White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Monday.

Earlier that day, Yemeni armed forces said they had carried out a large-scale military operation against strategically-important targets deep inside the UAE.

The Emirates is Saudi Arabia’s main ally in a 2015-present war and simultaneous siege that the kingdom has been leading against Yemen in order to change the impoverished country’s ruling structure. The war has killed tens of thousands of Yemenis and turned the entire country into the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Detailing the Monday defensive operation, codenamed Yemen Storm-3, Yemeni Armed Forces spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Saree said the forces struck designated sensitive facilities in the Emirati capital of Abu Dhabi with barrages of Zulfiqar ballistic missiles. He added that important targets in Dubai were also hit with long-endurance Sammad-3 (Invincible-3) drones.

The Emirates claimed it destroyed a ballistic missile mid-air. The Pentagon backed the Emirati version by saying that US forces in the UAE had activated their Patriot missile systems, but added that it were actually the UAE’s surface-to-air interceptors that allegedly brought down the incoming projectile.

The UAE hosts some 2,000 US forces. The country acts as a crucial base of operations for the deployment of American armed drones and F-35 stealth warplanes.

Explaining further, Psaki said, “I would say we are working quite closely with them (the Emiratis).”

The United States has been lending all-out arms, logistical, and political support to the Saudi-led invasion since its onset.

The arms support has included provision of surgical weapons for the invading coalition that the aggressors have been using amply against Yemeni civilians.

Amid an escalation in Yemen’s counterattacks against the UAE, the Saudi-led coalition launched a round of indiscriminate aerial assaults, including against the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, on January 25.

The UK-based Amnesty International rights group reported afterwards that the laser-guided bomb that was used by the coalition to hit a detention center in the northwestern Yemeni city of Sa’ada had been manufactured by the US.

On Tuesday, Saree repeated a threat he had leveled against the UAE last week, in which he had warned that with the Emirates’ ongoing involvement in the devastating war, the country’s popular Expo 2020 might be the next target.

Yemen calls UAE rulers Israeli mercs

Mohammed Abdul-Salam, the Yemeni popular resistance Ansarullah movement’s spokesman, meanwhile, called the UAE’s rulers “the Israeli enemy’s mercenaries.”

The Israeli regime’s President Isaac Herzog paid a visit to the UAE earlier, more than a year after Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv signed a US-brokered normalization agreement that provoked a sharp backlash in the region.

“[The act of] normalization of relations with Israel per se is tantamount to [waging] war against Islam and Muslims,” Abdul-Salam said.

“And these people (the Emiratis) have gone [even] farther than that,” he noted, saying the Emirates’ aggression against Yemen served as “part of” Abu Dhabi’s efforts to ingratiate itself with the Israeli regime.