Some hope for Yemen?

A sliver of hope that the one-year-old war in Yemen could come to an end has been prompted by the presence of a high-level Houthi delegating in Saudi Arabia to discuss the terms of a settlement to the armed conflict in their country, where the warring parties seem to have reached a stalemate.

It has been reported by the UN that about 6,000 people died in the fighting in Yemen and hundreds of thousands were injured or forced to flee their homes.

Riyadh took the initiative of inviting the Houthi delegation for dialogue in order to save lives and, hopefully, bring the conflict to a peaceful resolution on the basis of the relevant UN Security Council resolution, which called for an end to the rebellion spearheaded by the Iran-supported Houthi movement and the restoration to power of the legitimate Yemeni government.

The many months of fighting must have made the parties to the conflict realise that the problems cannot be solved by force of arms and that a political solution needs to be considered.

The fact that the Houthis responded favourably to the Saudi call and sent a delegation to Riyadh to discuss peace is a good sign, one that could signal that the conflict is closer to a resolution than at any other moment in the past.

Of course, the Houthis would not have moved without receiving a nod from Iran, which arms and supports the movement politically and economically.

As such, a peace agreement in Yemen may also signal some rapprochement between Tehran and Riyadh, and, by greater extension, that the Syrian civil war — where Iran and Russia hold most of the cards — may also be close to a political solution.

The thawing of relations between Moscow and Riyadh might also be due to the need to deal with the low oil prices in the international market, a situation these two major oil-producing countries would probably greatly want to stop and reverse.