Houthis attack Saudi refinery on the Red Sea coast

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0:52hello and welcome to news hour it's coming to you live from the bbc world service studios in Central London, I'm Tim Franks. And we're beginning with a question, the question as to whether Yemen is about to tip back into full-scale conflict. Just to be clear, the civil war in Yemen may have been something that we've not been talking about much recently, but it has continued to shape, even wreck the lives of millions in the Middle East, as it has for much of the last 12 years. Now, though, there is particular concern that the recent assorts by the Iran-backed Houthi paramilitary group could lead to a rapid escalation in fighting.

1:29Their immediate enemy is the internationally recognised government of Yemen, but that government has been very strongly backed by Saudi Arabia. And today, the Houthis say that in their latest attack against Saudi interests, their drones targeted a refinery on the Red Sea coast. And just as we were coming on air, I see that the Yemeni military is saying that seven people have been killed in a Houthi strike on the port of Mokka, that's the southwest coast of Yemen. Hussain al-Bukhati is a Yemeni journalist and pro-Houthi commentator and joins me on the line now from the capital, Sana 'a. Hussain, thank you for your time.

2:09Can you explain to me why it is that the Houthis are stepping up attacks at the moment? They are not the thing that they're doing because Saudi has broke the ceasefire that was agreed in 2022 by targeting Sana 'a Airport a month ago. And because Saudi still hasn't implemented the roadmap agreement that was signed in 2023, and since that day Yemen is still under Saudi blockade, Sana 'a Airport is closed, and as well, the Hodeidah port, Saudi is allowing only a few ships to reach Hodeidah and all those few ships, they are forced to reach Hodeidah port to go to Djibouti port and they stayed there for between one month to four months.

3:02So, and this actually adds cost to the Yemeni livelihood and Saudi is in control of Yemeni oil and gas revenue. They are not paying Yemeni salaries. They are not using that money to build infrastructure, but it's the opposite. They are using it to build their army bases across Yemen. So, Hussein, just to pick you up on your first point, which was this attack by the Saudis on Sana 'a airport. I mean, they were saying that they did this attack preemptively because they wanted to stop a plane landing from Iran, which was full of personnel, know-how, military and dual-use equipment. And this wasn't the first time that the Iranians had tried to fly in military supplies for you.

3:56So they said that they were acting preemptively against your attempt to inflame the situation. I mean, no, this is actually a big lie, because if Iran went to smoke a weapon to Yemen, they are not going to send an airline, civilian airline, with hundreds of Yemeni people who are stranded outside Yemen to Sana 'a airport. And as soon as the flight reached Sana 'a, there was international media and local media that were filming the entire landing. And as well, when the plane had left Yemen and Iran could smuggle weapons by sea, I mean, there's 2 ,500 of Yemeni coasts. But isn't the truth, Hussein, that you're seeing what Iran is doing in terms of its war with the US and how it is trying to project its power in a very muscular way across the region?

4:49And you're thinking, well, you know, if it's working for Iran, we'll have a piece of the action as well. I mean, just look at the blockade in the Red Sea. Actually, it's Iran. We are the ones who teach Iran to block the Strait of Hormuz because Yemen, when they blocked the Ritzi in front of the Zionist state of Israel, a United States and Israel and UK have failed to stop Yemeni attacking Zionist ships in the Ritzi. So Iran thought, OK, it's easy to close the Persian Gulf. And regarding what's happening in Iran, it has nothing to do with Yemen. Yemen has been under attack since 2015. Saudi has conducted more than 300 ,000 air strikes.

5:31So what Yemen is doing now is what Yemen needs. It has nothing to do with Iran at all as they try to do. But look, it's actually silly. Every time Yemen retaliates or attacks Saudi since 2015, they always say this is linked to Iran and they totally forgot what Saudi have done in Yemen. Hussain Al-Bukhati, thank you very much for your time. I'm speaking to us live from Sana. Listening to that, Iona Craig, a journalist specialising in Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula, currently based in the UK, but has spent many, many years reporting from Yemen. Iona, good to have you back on NewsHour. What's your assessment of how dangerous this moment is for Yemen?

6:11Good afternoon. I think it's very dangerous at the moment. We haven't seen anything like this since 2022, when the truce was arranged between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia. The airstrikes that we saw that began in response from Saudi Arabia on the 13th of July that targeted Sana 'a Airport, which you were just hearing about, and then again on the 24th of July, were the first airstrikes by Saudi Arabia against the Houthis since 2022. And now we have this scaling up of fighting on the ground in Yemen, which has been very extensive over recent days and even the last 48 hours in Marib, on the eastern front line, in Hadramount, in Hudaydah, on the west coast.

6:57And that is very concerning. So we've got multi sort of layers of what's going on at the moment. And all of them are indicating further escalation, certainly. But as you mentioned at the beginning, a slip back into where we were between 2015 and 2022. And given that, who do you think it is who thinks that maybe now is a good time to try and push and inflict some damage militarily? I think, you know, there's a lot about the timing here, obviously. You know, slightly going back to what Hussein was saying, if it was all about Iran's influence and wanting the Bab al-Mendab closed, it would have happened a lot sooner.

7:44You know, that confrontation between the US, Israel and Iran has been going on since February. I think the timing here really for the Houthis goes back to, you know, the roadmap which was mentioned. The Houthis were looking to gain a huge amount financially out of a deal with Saudi Arabia, which would have seen salaries being paid, would have eased governance and economic issues in Houthi-controlled territory. And that just hasn't happened. So this, you know, blockade is very targeted at Saudi Arabia specifically. and initially it may have looked like some extreme brinkmanship to get that roadmap back into discussions but we've kind of gone beyond that now but the pressure is still very much on Saudi Arabia and at the moment they responded with those strikes on the 13th of July well that was an initiation by them and then responded again on the 24th of July after oil tankers were attacked but Saudi is under pressure because of what's happening in the Strait of Hormuz.

8:44This blockade by the Houthis and attacks on their Western Red Sea ports is impacting the ability of Saudi Arabia to continue exporting oil, particularly to the Asia market. And that's what now brings more pressure. If the Strait of Hormuz wasn't already closed, then this pressure that the Houthis are putting on wouldn't have the same sort of impact. But that's what they're able to leverage at the moment over Saudi Arabia. Does the Saudi defence pact with Turkey and Pakistan change things at all? Well, I think we have to wait to see how that is tested, really. I would say at this moment, it is unlikely, purely because this is, you know, this is very much a Houthi to Saudi scenario.

9:32And although Iran obviously supports the Houthis in many ways, it is still directly a confrontation between the two. It would seem very unlikely, I would say at this point, that either Pakistan or Turkey would want to get involved. That being said, you know, the Saudis were very quick to create a coalition back in 2015 of regional nations to try and support them in their efforts against the Houthis. Although, realistically, their main ally in that was the UAE then. And of course, that split has since meant that won't happen. So it would seem militarily at the moment, that's still an open question.

10:09Iona Craig, thank you very much for joining us. Well, meanwhile, the other side of the Gulf, and Iona was talking about this, Iran is signalling that it's not going to rush into reopening the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping. That despite some very positive noises from the country that it's having direct negotiations with, that's Oman, the state with the coastline to the south of the strait. Iran's top security body. Its Supreme National Security Council has issued a statement saying that the channel won't be opened until the US accepts six demands, pretty stringent demands. Mehran Kamrava is professor of government at Georgetown University in Qatar.

10:47Mehran, what do you make of these six demands? I mean, things like payment of reparations, lifting of sanctions, it all seems rather unlikely. It does seem unlikely, but what the Iranians are trying to do is to revive the terms of the memorandum of understanding that they had signed with the United States. They see this as an opportunity to now pressure the US to go back to the negotiating table and to implement the terms of the original MOU they had signed. Which, as I say, seems rather unlikely at this point. So given that, what do you think the Iranians are trying to do just to prolong the negotiations here?

11:38Well, prolonging is one interpretation. The other is reviving it. What the Iranians want to avoid, and so do the Americans at this point, is another forever war. The Iranians, however, want to ensure that in return for opening the Strait of Hormuz, for example, the blockade is removed, the American naval blockade of Iranian ports. And so many of these demands, although on the surface they appear unreasonable and maximalist, really go back to the terms of the MOU that the Americans and the Iranians signed. And so what the Iranians are saying now is that, OK, now we have an arrangement for when the Hormuz opens, but the Hormuz won't be open until and unless, for example, the American naval blockade is removed, American military presence around the country is removed and sanctions are also removed.

12:42Yeah, which I guess the Americans would argue, well, you know, none of that is going to happen until we get satisfaction on, for example, the nuclear issue, which suggests that we're sort of back at the stage where nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, rather than the thought that the Strait of Hormuz could be sort of ticked off and then the other issues tackled. you're absolutely right and i think uh we need to uh be very sober and realistic we cannot be either too pessimistic or too optimistic interestingly the white house has yet to comment on iran's demands and probably they're considering it so what we now know is where the iranians stand and uh we need to find out where the white house now stands professor meran kamraba Thank you very much for joining us.

13:36Professor of Government at Georgetown University in Qatar. You're listening to NewsHour from the BBC.

13:49Coming up on the programme, the long-lost brother and sister who we united, thanks to artificial intelligence. The next words that Nicky said to me just... Yeah, I said, are you? Yeah. Are you, Titu? Are you my mum's son? I just could not believe I heard that. That remarkable union of brother and sister after decades, where they simply didn't know of one another, coming up in 30 minutes. Our main headlines at this hour, as we've been hearing, the Houthi movement in Yemen has attacked a Saudi oil refinery with a drone. And Israel has rejected a peace plan for Gaza that President Trump had hailed last month, saying it won't withdraw from the territory until Hamas disarms.

14:38We'll be live with our correspondent in Jerusalem in 15 minutes.

14:50This is NewsHour from the BBC World Service. Colombia has a new president, the hard-right former lawyer and political newbie, Abelardo de la Espriella. Saturday was his first full day in office, and it was marked by two attacks with explosives. A police officer died when a drone struck a police station in Cesar in the north of the country, and a highway toll booth was destroyed close to the city of Cali, where the presidential inauguration had taken place. The Colombian military has blamed dissident left-wing members of the FARC paramilitary group. Christopher Sabatini is senior fellow for Latin America at the Chatham House think tank in London.

15:32What does he read in to these bomb attacks? It's basically a message being sent by the criminal groups that De La Sede has promised to pursue like cockroaches. Those are his words. That they're going to take the fight to him too. They're not going to just sit and wait for him to engage in the sorts of military activities that he has promised without them fighting back. And this is a message. And when you say about them fighting back, I mean, the military's blamed dissident FARC rebels for these attacks. I mean, the new president's major language in terms of the sort of the war that he's going to prosecute seems to be directed towards the drugs gangs.

16:18Is there just is it a bit of a sort of blurred boundary between these insurgents and in quotes, the drugs cartels? That boundary vanished a long time ago. Basically, even the FARC, it was funding its entire guerrilla movement through narcotic trafficking and legal gold mining, human trafficking, all sorts. They've become more effectively more of a criminal group than a guerrilla group with any coherent ideology. In terms now of what we can expect from the new president, plenty of tough rhetoric. He's also been promised a billion dollars of aid from the US for his war against the cartels. It feels as if we're back where we've been many, many times before in Colombia in terms of a war on drugs.

17:16What do you think we can expect? Well, this is different than the Plan Colombia, which the Clinton administration created in 1998, effectively. That was an effort to really sort of retake territory, to push back, and not even just the narcotic traffickers, the guerrilla group. This now is a different era. First of all, Diabacería has really declared war on the cartels. And with the Trump administration and Peter Hedgath, who said things like the laws on war and human rights, they don't want to see their hands tied and they've been engaging in what they call kinetic strikes, which is, I think, a polite way of saying it is killing people without due process in the Caribbean and Pacific areas who are on boats alleged to be carrying drugs.

18:04This should be a much more violent, brutal, and iron-fisted strategy than was before. Whether it will be successful, whether just taking out gangs can be proficient in taking out leaders, without sort of all the other attendant effects of building infrastructure, filling in the vacuum of state authority in these areas, is questionable. But also it really does open up a very large concern for human rights abuse. given the statements and the affinities of these two administrations, the Trump administration and De La Espraya. Can you imagine a situation in which De La Espraya will actually invite American forces in some capacity to fight alongside the Colombian military?

18:50I expect that, and I expect, and there are rumours that could happen very soon. We've seen, for example, in Venezuela, where the U.S. ordered and conducted a missile strike, a drone strike that took out a gang leader of Trending Agua. I suspect the same thing will be happening in Colombia. And that was Christopher Sabatini, Latin America expert at Chatham House.

19:18In the occupied West Bank, thousands of ancient archaeological sites remain unexcavated. Israel has recently expropriated Palestinian land to develop two of them. Palestinians say archaeology is being used to deepen Israeli control of the territory. Israel says it's simply protecting and preserving its heritage. Now the UN's cultural agency, UNESCO, is planning to add Sebastia near Nablus to both its World Heritage list and its list of World Heritage in Danger, in a move which Palestinian officials have welcomed. But Israel's foreign minister is condemned as an attempt to change history. Sebastian Asher has this report from Sebastian.

20:00Up in the hills above the Roman columns of Sebastian are olive fields that have been cultivated for generations by Palestinian families. It's a vital income for them, of course, but it goes deeper than that, as one of those landowners, Abu Madif, explains. Every tree has received more of my attention than my children, more than my family and more than myself. Abu Madif says he's now received notification that his land, is part of a tranche of around 450 acres that the Israeli authorities are taking possession of in order to develop a new national park in the archaeological site. Standing on a path between the car park at the ancient site of Sebastia, where the Roman era forum once stood, and the columns of the basilica, the mayor of Sebastia, Mohammed Azem, looks down to his right at some rubbish left in the ruins.

20:50He says that as Israeli-controlled titans, local people no longer feel free to clean the site. Nahed Saka, who owns a local restaurant that is under threat of demolition, says the Israeli plan seems to be to cut Palestinian residents off from the archaeological site. In the middle of the ancient Roman theatre, an Israeli activist, Alon Arad, who heads a group that aims to ensure that the ancient heritage of a region belongs to all communities, says the Israeli authorities have bypassed consultation with the local administration and residents of Sebastia. The thing is that Israel is not the owner of this place.

21:28This is a Palestinian heritage site. And in order to do it in a positive way, it has to be done with the local community, with the municipality, in order for them to benefit.

21:44Further to the south in the West Bank and just in sight of Jerusalem, a man-made hill rises at Herodium with an extraordinary palace built on its summit by King Herod, who ruled these lands more than 2 ,000 years ago before the birth of Christ. Recently here too, Israel has begun to expropriate land, this time around 80 acres for what it says is the preservation and development of the site. For Shmuel Browns, who's worked on excavations here and leads deeply infused tours when there's a call, it's vital for Israeli archaeologists and officials to be able to oversee and protect places that are so freighted with significance.

22:24The way we decide whether Herod was here is by finding a coin from Herod or pottery that can be dated to the time of Herod right here. A new law was proposed earlier this year that would have given the Heritage Ministry sweeping powers to take control of land across the whole of the West Bank. It's now on hold as elections are coming up in Israel, and it may never re-emerge. Back in Sebastia, the Israeli activist Alon Arad says the very fact that the bill was put forward shows how even the extraordinary archaeological riches of the West Bank have been weaponized. This is exactly how the mechanism works.

23:04You use archaeology in order to do excavations, to rewrite history, but you also use it in order to reallocate lands from Palestinian to Israeli. Despite the new law being on hold and the intervention by UNESCO, their owners fear their fortunes may never revive if the Israeli authorities increase their control of the site, effectively removing it from the custodianship of its local Palestinian population. Sebastian Asher reporting from the West Bank, and we'll be getting the latest developments out of Israel in a few minutes, where the Israeli Prime Minister says he rejects the Gaza peace plan.

23:49Welcome back to NewsHour. A new theatre production explores the widely unknown story of the African country that tried to win the space race of the 1960s. You may think about the US or the USSR when talking about the contest to land the first man on the moon. But Zambia also had its own stratospheric aspirations. Stephanie Prentice has been to the Wildness Festival in the English countryside to speak to the creative team, hoping to immortalise Zambia's self-styled Afro-nauts on stage. That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. Back in 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon, winning the space race for the United States after years of jostling with the Soviet Union to get there first.

24:42But the world's superpowers at the time weren't the only ones trying. Over in Zambia, a scientist and teacher called Edward Makuka Coloso was busy setting up a science academy. me. In 1964, he started recruiting what he called Afronauts, a group of teenagers and two cats who he trained on a large abandoned farm. Is this the site for your rocket launching program? That the BBC went to visit. And what do you think the reaction of America and Russia will be to Zambia's joining in the space race? We underestimate our resources plus the intelligence, but I'm sure where we are catching them. Training involved exercises like rolling astronauts down a hill in steel drums to simulate weightlessness.

25:31The story is only really well known in Zambia, but now one group is changing that.

25:42Musa Zulu is part of a performance group called Circus Zambia. It is very important to tell these kind of stories because when people know about our story as Zambia, it means that our history is going to be preserved. The mission is brought to life as a circus spectacle with aerial acrobatics, dancing and songs and astronaut cats. Cast member Ephraim Pieri told us how it felt finding a new audience. For us, it was an amazing experience. Emotional, happy. It was super, super overwhelming. and powerful. And it's an indigenous Zambian African story.

26:31The Zambian Space Programme's dream of a human feline presence on the moon may not have worked out in the end. But as the cast told us, that's not the point of telling the story. When people talk about this story, most of them focus on their failure. It was almost impossible for a Zambian country or for a Zambian team of people to go to the moon. But this guy had a dream. He believed he had a plan, he had all these things set up. So for us, we just focused on the positivity, encouraging young people, big people and everyone around the world to say, if you have a dream, you can achieve it and you can do it.

27:05So just believe it and work hard. Musa Zulu from Circus Zambia ending that report by Stephanie Prentice.