In early March 2019, British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt from the former colonial protectorate and the temporary capital of the internationally recognized Yemeni government, Aden, addressed the Yemenis.

He wore the bulletproof armor that journalists tend to wear over the clothes Western officials wore on holidays, or when they took their pets for a walk. A heavenly shirt with rolled-up sleeves, and olive linen trousers, just as if by his look he wanted to very informal to say things not usually said in front of the camera.

The visit was surprising, and its sensitive timing sent a number of implicit messages; At that time, Aden was on the cusp of a fierce internal war, between political and weapon partners, to the extent that the government's position in the Ma'ashiq Palace - the place of the British official's visit - became very risky.

In clearer terms, at a time when Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi was unable to return to his Republican Palace in (Ma’ashiq), and in conjunction with arbitrary measures imposed by armed groups, during which the Yemeni citizen could not cross the road to Al-Alam Gate to enter the dismembered city, the British minister stand to deliver his sermon from one of the sad sea views of the presidential residence.

The United Kingdom, or Britain itself, as the most influential international party, is presented at the bottom of the table in the Yemeni issue, while being the pen holder of the Yemeni file at the UN Security Council, and the international community has given it the opportunity for international mediation in settling the conflict, by choosing the expert in British international law Martin Griffiths, as a UN envoy to Yemen.

After all these years of Britain’s departure of the colonial state from the Yemeni lands on October 14, 1963, the question of the interests it seeks to achieve remains unanswered, after keeping the door of intervention unobstructed, if there is no colonial tendency, and even if retroactively, its practices still exist in the countries that chose to break free from the guardianship of the colonizer, by armed struggle.

The visit of the British Foreign Secretary to Aden came as part of a diplomatic tour that included the Emirates and the Sultanate of Oman, the two former colonies of Her Majesty's state, and the two current concubines, who preferred to keep part of the British guardianship over their affairs after independence, which gave them the opportunity to enjoy protection.

Despite the many aspects of politics, the content of the speech that the official was keen to direct to the Yemenis was not as important as the clear message that Britain was able to send, after all this time of independence: Here we are again in Aden, but not to colonize you this time, but to remind you of the exorbitant tax of independence.

This entry seems appropriate to refute the popular saying of the Yemeni belligerents since 2014, that the war was necessary to restore national sovereignty, but six years of war seemed more than enough to say otherwise.

There is no clearer evidence than the dramatic shift in the rhetoric of war, from “defending the poor against difficult economic conditions,” to “defending the sovereignty of the country and deciding the fate of parts of its lands,” and here we are in the largest human crisis in the world for more than half a century.

It is natural, then, that the pretext of defending sovereignty of the country becomes the last of the lies that are destined to fall in the way of Yemenis who are struggling to return to the normal course of their lives.

Although we did not realize the exact details of how the Iranian ambassador, Hassan Erlo, and the Saudi ambassador, Muhammad Al Jaber, became the most influential ambassadors to blatantly interfere in the affairs of Yemenis, but the indicators of their negative impact on internal public life have recently become greater than the ability of a country and its citizens to bear or remain silent. 

In times when sovereignty meant something other than what we see, the ambassador's job was limited to represent his country's interests at home, within recognized international protocols. Although the pre-2011 period witnessed the interventions of ambassadors in issues of political polarization in Yemen, or mobilization towards advocating international and regional issues, as we saw from the activity of the Libyan embassy ​​during the period from 2007 to 2009, as part of Gaddafi’s campaign against Saudi King Abdullah, the Iranian and the American, last of which was during the Basindoha government. But this diplomatic conflict in Yemeni territory was one of the clear manifestations of the country's inability to manage its affairs.

Everyone still remembers the performance of the former US ambassador to Yemen, Gerald Feierstein, during the transitional period, to the extent that he responded to a journalist who called him the "actual ruler of Yemen" by saying: "This is some of the kindness of the Yemenis."

An ambassador, and another military Commander

The Saudi ambassador to Yemen, Muhammad Al Jaber, presents himself as a full guardian of the political and economic affairs of the Yemenis, without the need for equivocation, or the trouble of reminding himself and his country, that the diplomatic function is narrower than the baggy dress that the war made for him or perhaps the joint geography.

In the last period, which witnessed the deliberations of sharing the cake of the Yemeni government, we saw a state of rush to appease the Saudi ambassador, which reached its climax among the Yemeni (officials of the KSA exile), even as if offering the obligations of loyalty and obedience was an objective condition, for some ministers to keep their posts and more!

At the end of October 2020, the former Yemeni Prime Minister, Ahmed Obaid bin Daghr, vilified unnamed ambassadors, saying that they were interfering in the appointment of the new government without taking into account the security and military aspects [in the Riyadh Agreement].

However, shortly after, the Yemeni official, who is close to President Hadi, quickly returned to clarify what happened (from confusion), and wrote: “Do not fish in murky water, today’s article doesn’t mean His Excellency Ambassador Muhammad Al Jaber, but other ambassadors who requested speedy announcing the government, believing that the formation of the government regardless the military side, would achieves stability."

He added, "We have the utmost respect for Ambassador Al Jaber and the Kingdom's leadership, and our relationship with them is permanent and strategic."

As for a former prime minister, who was overthrown months earlier by his sincere intentions that he tried, while taking the helm of the government, to get closer to exercising his constitutional powers, dreams of returning to the position require him to refute any confusion in his attitudes, when it comes to the Saudi ambassador, Muhammad Al Jaber.

But also, given the research estrangement of Saudi study centers, with regard to the Yemeni issue, that everything that is going on in this country is not worth examining, is what made the Saudi diplomat rise to this critical level, and he found himself holding the threads of the entire political and intelligence game.

Al Jaber is one of the Saudi officials who did not have cracks in the royal throne after 2014, and he was able to maintain his position, and besides his position, he heads a group of vital operations for the regime he represents, including his supervision of the Saudi Program for the Development and Reconstruction of Yemen, and the executive management of the Center for Comprehensive Humanitarian Operations Support in Yemen, and he heads the Strategic Analysis Department at the Saudi Ministry of Defense.

In early August 2018, and in the last presence of the Yemeni president on the territory of his country, the latter was on a visit to the Yemeni city of Mahra, which witnessed tension after the growth of Saudi influence at the expense of the established Omani influence. However, contrary to diplomatic tradition, the Saudi ambassador, Muhammad Al Jaber, received the Yemeni president at the Yemeni airport, which gave activists on social media a new opportunity to disdain the daily practices of neighborhood diplomacy, which they always found lacking in civility and common sense. Instead, this behavior reflects interference in Yemeni affairs and attempts to impose a new reality through the chaos that is sweeping the country.

A few years later, as the Yemeni presidential activity dwindled to zero, everyone saw Al Jaber as if he was (the last guard) in a political system that had accepted alienation from its people and its reality; He deposits ambassadors, receives others, signs memoranda of understanding on Yemen, between Saudi sovereign funds, stating that Saudi Arabia is the first party in this completely dysfunctional equation while Ambassador Al Jaber is the other party.

Al Jaber, too, appears from time to time in campaigns to incite Yemeni activists against each other, and at least one journalist (due to the change of interests and policies) admitted his participation in a news fabrication kitchen, which was intended to support the ambassador’s orientations and the media discourse acceptable to the ruling ambassador. In some of these occasions, he lost his prudence and diplomacy, to go out, with all the means to participate in the choir.

Who is Muhammad Al Jaber?

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia sources say that Muhammad Al Jaber was born in 1970, in the Aseer region in southern Saudi Arabia.

The encyclopedia presents him as having a master's degree in military sciences and business administration from King Abdulaziz University, and a bachelor's degree in military sciences from King Abdulaziz Military College.

These sources revealed that he studied strategic analysis in the United States of America, and planning psychological operations in Britain. Prior to his appointment, Al Jaber worked as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Yemen, as a military attaché in Yemen and Djibouti in 2009.

Ambassador and invader 

"The Islamic Revolution came in order to eliminate internal tyranny and foreign domination and to help oppressed peoples, which makes global arrogance and the Zionists fear its recurrence in Yemen. The victory of the Islamic Revolution in its conquest of Yemen is the biggest proof of that."

This is the last tweet, published by the Iranian ambassador to the Ansar Allah group (Houthis), Hassan Erlo, on February 10, and in three languages; English, Persian, and Arabic, and despite the use of equivocal language, in the Arabic tweet, the language of (invasion) and (hegemony) seemed blatant, and did not need a diplomatic language to deliver it to the Yemenis, and perhaps to the world.

On October 17, 2020, the new Iranian ambassador, Hassan Erlo, arrived in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, in an international barter, of which the United States was, in one way or another, a part. At the time, this step raised a lot of questions and controversy, especially as it contradicted the norms related to international diplomacy, as this activity was governed by the Vienna Convention. However, despite the complexity of the Yemeni situation, not everyone was optimistic about this step, but it went beyond feeling pessimism to a kind of extremist practices that contradict the spirit of the Yemeni law and constitution. Here, it is not possible to be certain about the nature of the ambassador’s work and his powers, but what seems clear is that the actions of the de-facto authority in Sana’a, after the arrival of the Iranian ambassador, became tainted with recklessness, impulsiveness and aggression, and tended to shift from a weapon authority to a theocratic state that reproduces the Iranian model in its representations in absolute violation of the constitution of the Republic of Yemen. 

What makes us go to build this believe, is the steady growth of the role of the ambassador, and the attempt to inform the “Ansar Allah” group to show him as a military ruler, rather than a diplomat, from the footage that accompanied the man’s movements in the Seventy Square, the moment of the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday, to the videos leaked to the media, and showed him, leading a queue of Sanaa government officials, chanting the Persian anthem, in a memorial event for the commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Qassem Soleimani.

This behavior posed a challenge, not to the outside and to the region whose provocation is part of the man's goodwill missions, but even to the inside, who refuses to turn their country into a back garden for neighbors and a region fraught with conflicts.

On January 19 of this year, the Iranian ambassador said, during one of his meetings, that "some international organizations operating in Yemen are engaging in suspicious activities", without any doubt that such a statement makes fears of "blatant interference" in the country's affairs as confirmed and true reality.

Erlo went beyond this fleeting statement, to a more detailed one, identifying "170 organizations" he said "work to obliterate civilization and fuel soft war."

The terms "civilization obliteration" and "soft war", in the ambassador's inflammatory words, are also intrusive, invented in the forced way of applying the theocracy model, to a society that is originally conservative, but knows well the real threat to its civilization and culture, with the new guardians of virtue seeing its "civilization". They bring him back, after ten years of struggle, to free themselves from the clutches of tyranny and backwardness.

At the same meeting, the ambassador’s intentions and tasks revealed themselves, and he said, “Yemen is going today through what the Islamic Republic of Iran has gone through in the past, which has taken an advanced strategy to restore civilization, until it achieved in 40 years what other countries did not achieve in 400 years.” 

Only ten days after these blatant, fiery statements, we see what it means to cut off from this country's 400-year journey. Yes, 400 years, if not more, but not forward, but backward, the first hate campaign against the women of the country began, with unofficial incitement for women to drive, and then officially began to separate men and women in institutes and restaurants, and put illegal requirements on birth control issues, and thus preventing women working in restaurants from practicing their jobs, and allocating sermon lessons in the capital’s mosques, which began on Friday the 29th of January, and has not ended yet, to incite against women and their rights guaranteed by law.

The Iranian ambassador does not know what Yemen was like before the year 90, but those who implement his policies to oppress society and impose guardianship on it realize that “faith identity” is an intrusive act on a people, tired of guardianship and deception, and it is time for them to free themselves from their hunger, disease and oppression.

Who is Earlo?

The media affiliated with the Iranian coalition presents Hassan Erlo as being born in 1959 in Tehran. He began his career in the Iranian Foreign Ministry as an interest in Gulf affairs, and then was appointed director of the Yemeni office in the ministry.

These means also granting him a role in coordinating Iranian aid to Yemen after the break of the war, and sending planes and (relief) ships to the Yemeni interior, before being authorized (in full) to take over the Yemeni file, and accrediting him as Iran’s ambassador to Yemen.

However, sources against the Iranian regime presented the ambassador as being from the hawkish wing within the theocratic Republic of Iran, as an experienced member of the IRGC's wing, and a military leader close to the Supreme Leader of the Iranian Revolution, Ali Khamenei.

According to these sources, Erlo participated in and was wounded in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, and in his military experience he is presented as an expert in "anti-aircraft weapons". At the end of last year, the United States included Airlo in its terrorism-related sanctions list.