INSS Insight No. 164 

The recently announced ceasefire between the Yemeni government and Shiite rebels will ideally end what has been the largest military mobilization in the Arabian Peninsula since the 1991 Gulf War. To many observers, the war was no less than a regional front line between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia. The ending or at least the slowing of the conflict might spell some relief for the Yemeni government, which is concurrently battling al-Qaeda and an active secessionist movement.

Although Sana'a has been fighting the rebels intermittently since 2004, the latest round was the most bloody of the past six years. The conflict intensified last summer when Sana'a launched Operation Scorched Earth.

The United States apparently has reached the point where it must either accept that Iran will develop nuclear weapons at some point if it wishes, or take military action to prevent this.

There is a third strategy, however: Washington can seek to redefine the Iranian question.

As we have no idea what leaders on either side are thinking, exploring this represents an exercise in geopolitical theory. Let's begin with the two apparent stark choices.

Diplomacy vs. the Military Option

AQAP's Saeed al-Shehri: "Repelling the Crusader Aggression"

The NEFA Foundation has obtained and translated a new audio recording of Saeed al-Shehri, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee who has assumed a key leadership role in Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, titled, "Repelling the Crusader Aggression."

In the message, al-Shehri congratulates the "heroic mujahed Omar al-Farooq", who attempted to bring down a Northwest Airlines Flight on Christmas Day 2009, and laments Abdulmutallab's imprisonment.

The NEFA Foundation has obtained a transcript of a video interview, released by Al-Qaida's As-Sahab Media Foundation, with "Abu Dujanah al-Khorasani" (a.k.a. Jordanian doctor Humam al-Balawi), who carried out the deadly suicide bomb attack in late December on the CIA base at Camp Chapman, in the southeast Afghan province of Khost.

According to al-Balawi, "My trip with Jihad began a few years ago, after the American invasion of Iraq. I made many attempts to join the Jihad in Iraq, but Allah decreed something else for me."