On February 14, Abdul Bari Atwan wrote the following piece in the electronic Rai al-Youm daily: “…Emerging pieces of news indicate that a trilateral summit meeting has taken place in Al-Riyadh between Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, the Saudi deputy crown prince and minister of defense, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed, the Abu Dhabi crown prince and the deputy high commander of the Emirati armed forces, in addition to Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, who was angry upon his return from Aden where he had stayed for three days.

“This urgent summit came following an “unprecedented” tension between the presidential protection forces headed by Nasser Abdrabbuh Hadi, the president’s son (doesn’t this remind us of Ali Abdullah Saleh and his cousin Yehya?) and the airport protection forces headed by Col. Saleh al-Omeiri, knowing that President Hadi recently issued a decision to sack Al-Omeiri who refused to obey this decision and rebelled, along with his forces, against the president.

“The story began when Col. Al-Omeiri closed the Aden Airport and prevented President Hadi’s jet from landing knowing that the jet was coming from Al-Riyadh. This pushed the plane’s pilot to head to the island of Socotra in the Pacific Ocean… He left two days later when a temporary solution was reached and when his son’s forces controlled the airport. However, he only stayed in the temporary capital for two days, after which he flew to Al-Riyadh to complain to the Saudi leadership about the insults he had suffered at the airport of the liberated and temporary capital.

“There are many details and no room to state them all. The main point is that there are some major differences between the UAE, the forces of which control the city of Aden and other southern Yemeni cities in cooperation with the Security Firmness forces that are supported by the UAE, and President Hadi’s forces. The UAE never accepted the latest decisions of President Hadi to sack the former Prime Minister, Khaled Bahhah, who was one of the UAE’s allies, and the appointment of Ahmad Bin Doghor instead. The more dangerous part for the UAE consists of the alliance between President Hadi and the MB-affiliated Reform Party…

“There are two stories: the first one indicates that the conflict remained confined to the UAE and President Hadi without expanding to the relations between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which supports Hadi. The second story indicates the opposite by stating that the conflict between Hadi and the UAE is merely the tip of the iceberg as it hides a higher conflict between the two largest forces of the Arab alliance…"