As Iranian proxy Hezbollah works to destabilize Lebanon’s pro-Western government through violence and intimidation, another Shiite group is emulating that strategy in Yemen. According to the World Tribune, the radical Shiite Believing Youth has, with Iranian support, been waging an off-and-on insurgency against the government of Yemen for the past 3 years. Now this latests report has the group driving a small community of Jews from their village in the north of the country. The group’s ultimatum read, “it has become clear to us that they were doing things which serve mainly Zionism, which seeks to corrupt the people and distance them from their principles, their values, their morals, and their religion.” The Jews were given 10 days to leave the country. Yemen is no democracy, but writing in THE DAILY STANDARD in October of last year, Abigail Lavin described that country’s first tentative steps towards elected government. It seems wherever there is progress in the Middle East–Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen–there is also the malign influence of Iran in the form of terrorism and insurgency.
