French military deployment in Saudi Arabia: a “strictly defensive” mission

The French military assets which must be sent to Saudi Arabia will be sent on a “strictly defensive” basis to protect crude exports on the Red Sea, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said on Sunday September 27 on France 2. French President Emmanuel Macron announced Thursday evening the sending of “soldiers, radars, defense systems to protect” the Yanbu site, the main Saudi crude export terminal on the Red Sea targeted by the Yemeni Houthi rebels, in the aim of lowering the price of fuel.

Asked about the risk of being considered co-belligerents by the Houthis, Jean-Noël Barrot replied: “Absolutely not (...) It’s strictly defensive.” “We provide defensive means (...) Since the start of the war in Iran, we have deployed military means to protect our allies, our partners. Have we ever been considered belligerent? Never,” he stressed, referring in particular to operations to protect the skies of the United Arab Emirates against Iranian drones.

The scale of the French deployment will depend “on the need as expressed by the partner (Saudi, Editor's note), on our own capabilities and on the evolution of the situation,” he added. The minister remained vague on the possibility of a debate in Parliament, demanded by several political leaders, on the commitment of forces in the middle of the conflict between the Saudi kingdom and the pro-Iranian rebels.

“No question of becoming belligerent,” warns Jean-Luc Mélenchon

“We will have a thousand opportunities to debate these questions,” he said, stressing that a vote under article 35 of the Constitution, requested by the radical left candidate for the French presidential election Jean-Luc Mélenchon, “is only prescribed (...) at the end of a period of four months”. Jean-Luc Mélenchon notably considered that sending “troops to Saudi Arabia is to settle in a theater of war. If the base is hit, what will we do? No question of becoming belligerent.

The recent resumption of hostilities in Yemen, with a lightning offensive by the Houthis towards the coast of the Red Sea which they now fully control, strongly affects Saudi Arabia, the world's leading exporter of crude oil, with a fall in traffic in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

This passage linking Europe to Asia via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal had become even more important for Saudi Arabia since Iran severely disrupted traffic in the Strait of Hormuz on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula.