“Israel has played an overt, vital role in the battle of Ma’rib in particular and throughout Yemen in general,” Zayd Ahmad al-Grsy said in an interview with Press TV.
“Any movement of the United Arab Emirates, whether in the Red Sea, south of Yemen, Socotra Island and other islands, is an Israeli action carried out by the Tel Aviv regime under the cover of Abu Dhabi,” al-Grsy said.
He stressed that all of the UAE's movements are carried out with the aim of achieving the Israeli regime’s goals.
The political analyst maintained that Israel has been directly involved in the war against Yemen, reiterating that the regime’s role is completely obvious in the Ma’rib battle.
Saudi Arabia and its allies, the UAE in particular, launched a deadly military campaign against Yemen in March 2015 to return Yemen's former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi to power.
The war – which the Saudis thought would last only a few weeks but is still ongoing – has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, including women and children, in what the United Nations has described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, and destroyed much of Yemen’s infrastructure.
Fearing Yemeni retaliation, the UAE announced in 2019 that it would withdraw its forces from Yemen, in what Yemenis has described as a false declaration.
The UAE is also planning to jointly develop an anti-drone missile system with Israel. In March, Israel's major aerospace and aviation manufacturer, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), announced the plan, saying it will work with UAE’s state-owned weapons maker EDGE to build the system in order “to detect, identify, classify, and intercept a broad range of threats.”
Al-Grsy said Israel has been training militants in the UAE and in its military bases in Eritrea, and has a presence in the command room of Ma’rib operations alongside Saudi, Emirati and American officers.
Certain reports show that Israeli fighters and espionage drones are also involved in the Ma’rib battle, he added.