As Yemen enters the seventh year of war, the international players keep confirming their inability to end it. Yemenis keep seeing them trapped in their own bubble bouncing between two statements: a) rethinking peace in Yemen, and b) ending the war in Yemen. As it stands now, the Biden administration has revoked the ‘terrorist’ designation on the Houthi Rebels, a designation that could have been used as a negotiation card to force them to move towards peace. For instance, it could have been used as leverage for the urgently needed maintenance of Safer, the oil tanker floating North of the Yemeni city Al-Houdaydah containing 1,160 million barrels of oil, in order to avoid a disaster.
International diplomats keep discussing unclear solutions for the Yemenis. To put it simply, the western diplomats, due to their insistence on linking the conflict with Iran’s nuclear deal and regional interests, have failed to understand the root causes of the conflict in Yemen, which can be found in the ideology and doctrine of the Houthi.