Episode 70. The US & The Civil War in Yemen with General Frank McKenzie and Ambassador Chris Henzel

Episode Transcript:

Amb. McCarthy: [00:00:13] Welcome to A Conversation, The Academy of Diplomacy series, The General and the Ambassador. Our podcast brings together senior U.S. diplomats and senior U.S. military leaders in conversations about their partnership during a major international crisis or challenge affecting U.S. national security. I am Ambassador Deborah McCarthy, the producer and host. Our focus today will be on Yemen. Our guests are General Frank McKenzie, who served until recently as commander of U.S. Central Command, and Ambassador Chris Henzel, the former U.S. ambassador to Yemen. The general the ambassador is a production of the American Academy of Diplomacy. This podcast has been sponsored by Dataminr, a leading artificial intelligence platform that delivers real time breaking news alerts to help you make critical decisions and respond with speed and confidence. General Frank McKenzie was the commander of U.S. Central Command from 2019 to 2022. Previously, he served on the Joint Staff, first as the director of Strategic Plans and Policy, and then as Director of the Joint Staff. In his career, he commanded at the Platoon, Company, Battalion, Marine Expeditionary Unit, and Component levels. In addition, he served as the deputy to the Deputy Chief of Staff for stability in Afghanistan and as director of the J5 at U.S. Central Command. Ambassador Chris Henzel served as a U.S. ambassador to Yemen from 2019 to 2021. He had a long diplomatic career in the Middle East, having also served as Chargé D'affaires at the U.S.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:01:52] Embassy in Saudi Arabia, director of the Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs at the Department of State, head of the Ninawa province reconstruction office in Mosul, Iraq. And Deputy Chief of mission in Bahrain. Well, welcome, gentlemen, and thank you for joining the General and the Ambassador Podcast Series. I'd like to start with a short introduction on Yemen for the benefit of our listeners. Yemen is a small, impoverished country on the Arabian Peninsula. It occupies a strategic location on the Bar al-Mandab Strait, which links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. For generations, the country has been wracked by internal struggles. It is also a base of operations for violent Islamists. In 2000, al Qaeda in Yemen conducted a suicide attack against the USS Cole, killing 17 U.S. servicemen. The country has been embroiled in a new civil war since 2015 between an internationally recognized government and the Houthi movement. A coalition of Sunni Arab states led by Saudi Arabia has been fighting the Houthis, who are supported by Iran. The U.S. and others have provided some backing to the Saudi led coalition and supported U.N. efforts to broker peace negotiations. General, Ambassador, you work together on this important country from 2019 to 2021. Can you review for us what your instructions were in taking up these leadership positions and put them in the context of U.S. interests in the region?

Gen. McKenzie: [00:03:28] Yemen is a stricken country that exists at a geographically critical part of the world, at the bottom of the Red Sea. If you look at a map, the Bar al-Mandab Dead Strait that you talked about is the length through which every ship must pass if it's going to go south through the Suez Canal. A significant fraction of the world's vital cargo goes through the Suez Canal. So Yemen is very important for the global commons, as are all the countries that border the Red Sea. From a military perspective and from my perspective, the instructions that I operated under were, first of all, our overarching objective in there was to prevent the development of attacks against the United States homeland by groups associated with either ISIS or al Qaeda. And sometimes we call them AQAP for shorthand for those two extremist groups. And of course, those two extremist groups were able to flourish because of the collapse of the government of Yemen in 2015 and the fighting that has occurred since then. We have other objectives there as well, supporting diplomatic initiatives to bring some form of peace to that ravaged country. But I'll let the Ambassador discuss that in a little bit more detail. From a military perspective, our goal is to prevent those attacks from developing. And also, I might add, not only attacks against our homeland, but as we've talked about, the key choke point of the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab. The Houthis have also reached out and attacked ships in that vital chokepoint. Free passage of commerce is also very important to us in keeping that vital sea line open is very important to us.

 Amb. Henzel: [00:04:51] You know, the military and our diplomatic branches of government have the same strategic instructions. They should have that and they did in this case. And I agree with the general, you'll notice that he mentioned counterterrorism first. And that's as it should be. It's not the part of Yemen policy that attracted the most attention, I guess, because it wasn't so controversial. But appropriately the number one aim of all branches of the US government. My instructions were advancing that same strategy the General summed up for us. I came into my job in Saudi Arabia toward the end of the Obama administration. Then throughout the Trump administration, I was both in Riyadh and then on the Yemen job. The goal all along was support the UN efforts to bring about a negotiated solution to the conflict. If that couldn't happen and we didn't actually turn my tenure, then what? Then the United States had to decide what to do about the conflict. And that in turn boiled down to what do we do about the Saudi role, since they were the biggest stakeholder and still are, and our relationship with them was so important. And that was something that Biden administration, Trump administration, before that the Obama administration were constantly wrestling.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:06:10] Well, as I noted, the Houthis have been supported by Iran. And General, as you reminded us in your force posture statement last March, CENTCOM was founded in part as a result of the rise of the regime in Iran. Can you talk a bit about Iran's military capabilities today and how they threaten U.S. interests in the region?

Gen. McKenzie: [00:06:33] So over the last 5 to 7 years, what Iran has done is they have developed their ballistic missile force to a level that they've never been at before. In fact, today they've got well over 3000 ballistic missiles that are capable of threatening virtually all of their neighbors in the region, including probably 100 or so that could hit Tel Aviv. But most of them are shorter range missiles. This is a new development. The Iranians have always had missiles, but they've never actually worked so hard to develop this into a capability that we would say gives them overmatch. And by overmatch, it's a term that means the ability to overwhelm the defenses of the person being attacked. And so they have the ability to generate overmatch against many of their neighbors with their ballistic missiles. Now, add to that the Iranian development of unmanned aerial vehicles and land attack cruise missiles, which were demonstrated in their attack in Saudi Arabia in September of 2019. These are all new capabilities and they are very, very concerning capabilities. Iran uses them to assert their hegemonic ambitions across the region, to enforce their will on their neighbors, to do a variety of things that are not in alignment with U.S. or regional interests, for that matter. Now, the other arm of Iran that is very powerful are their proxies, whether those proxies operate in Iraq, in Syria, in Lebanon or in Yemen. They're also another capability that Iran has to actually project power. And we see that coming together in Yemen in a sort of an unholy way. The Houthis, in my judgment, are not completely subservient to Iran, but they are clients of Iran. And so they're going to be very receptive to what Iran tells them to do or doesn't tell them to do.

 Gen. McKenzie: [00:08:09] At the same time, Iran has armed the Houthis with a variety of surface to surface missiles that they have fired into Saudi Arabia with astonishing regularity over the past several years. They've hit a palace in downtown Riyadh. They've hit a number of other targets. And the Saudis have done a pretty good job of defending themselves against those attacks. They have also launched attacks into the Red Sea at shipping, including US warships several years ago. So all of these things are made possible in Yemen by the fact that the Iranians smuggle weapons components into Yemen and they come by sea or they come over land. And the Houthis have proven to be pretty good engineers and they have optimized those weapons for the battlefield that they're in. And they've done some very good work on making those weapons more accurate. So writ large, I've said and I see no reason to change that statement. Iran's the most dangerous country in the region because of their capabilities, but also because of their demonstrated intent and a battleground in which Iran has been able to flex its muscles at relatively low cost to itself, while embarrassing nations like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Frankly, this is an area where they've had some success, success that they have not had in other areas such as Iraq or, frankly, in Syria. Again, look at a map. The geography is destiny. Yemen is an all traditional invasion route into Saudi Arabia. The Houthis are aware of that. The Iranians are aware of that, and the Saudis are certainly aware of that from the nature and character of their response.

 Amb. Henzel: [00:09:42] You know, all of us who have been following the region since 1979, we've seen Iran make very good use of its religious credentials with Shia minorities around the region. Many of them do have genuine grievances, its ideological credentials, even with some non Shia actors who are resisting the current status quo in the region. Here I'm thinking about some extremist Palestinian groups, the Bashar al Assad regime. They're able to insert their sometimes very talented people and they put a lot of resources into. The IRGC and their intelligence services in place after place. They've been able to transform these minority groups with grievances into partners or tools. In the case of Yemen, we saw this happened with the Zaydi minority, who, as you always hear, aren't exactly the same kind of Shia as the Iranians. But more importantly, they were a group that believed it had grievances against the establishment in Yemen and had been involved in on and off armed struggle with them for a couple of decades. The Iranians played a very long game cultivating their ties to say these so that when the Houthis gained military victory, they had their Iranian partners there. As the general said, they're not pawns to the Iranians, but they are willing and grateful partners. How that partnership continues into the future after the ceasefire that we just had a few months ago, will be a key question. And then how does the US seek to counter this? That's been quite a challenge. Our partners in the region need to be doing most of that when it comes to the Iranians manipulating their minorities. Frankly, some of our partners have not done a great job on that count.

 Amb. McCarthy: [00:11:39] Before we dive into other aspects of the Yemen conflict, I wanted to ask you a question. You were the U.S. ambassador to Yemen, but our physical embassy in that country was closed in 2015 when the Civil War began. So therefore, your mission operated out of Riyadh and Saudi Arabia. We've done podcasts in this series where U.S. ambassadors are operating in exile, so to speak. What were the major challenges for you and your team working out of Saudi Arabia in addressing the crisis in Yemen?

 Amb. Henzel: [00:12:14] Well, clearly, it's very difficult to do the things that an embassy is supposed to do when you're not even in the country. It was my predecessor, Matt Tueller, who closed down the embassy in Sana'a and he set up what they called the Yemen affairs unit, which is essentially the embassy in exile in Saudi Arabia. And then I took it over. First of all, whatever we were able to do, I owed CENTCOM and the US military a huge debt of gratitude for that. Without getting too deep into the details. They stood ready to devote very significant resources that enabled me to visit government controlled areas of Yemen out of Riyadh. And without that we would have been quite ineffective. We were able to do that, but maintained contact with important Yemeni exiles, chiefly the government who are based in Riyadh as well, but also some other capitals around the region. Other regional states are important players in Yemen, so we travel to engage with them. I think the biggest difficulties for me were first when I came on the job, I was able to make a couple of visits because the government used Aden as its sort of second capital. But there was basically a mini civil war in Aden that erupted in August of 19, which made the place basically unsafe to go to for a long time after that. And then we had a strike which again disrupted travel. The Saudis basically made it impossible for anyone to fly in and out of Saudi Arabia for a good seven months. So I'd say those are the two biggest difficulties running an embassy in exile. And in my case.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:13:50] Well, in this conflict, the United States has provided some assistance to the Saudis and other coalition partners. There's been congressional public criticism of this assistance due to civilian casualties during offensive operations, as well as from the fallout from the killing of Washington Post reporter Khashoggi. Can you talk a bit about the roles that the Department of Defense and the Department of State play in the provision of security assistance?

 Gen. McKenzie: [00:14:20] Provision of security assistance? It really is two departments working together FMS as foreign military sales. The equipment that we sell other nations is certainly something that is going to be approved by the Department of State. It's going to go through a lengthy process and what we call the interagency, where the different elements of the government talk about what does that nation want, what are we going to be prepared to give them, under what conditions are we going to give them that equipment? And that's the way we approach it across the world. And as you know, it is uniquely challenging in Saudi Arabia and in other nations in the region because of the congressional attention that we have and for some of the factors that you have already addressed. So we work closely with State to determine what's in the realm of the feasible. And we have helped the Saudis in a number of ways. For example, the Saudis have over 20 Patriot batteries, which are our air defense missile that we use ourselves and has been very effective and in fact critical for them defending themselves against who the attacks. And that is proven to be a very effective weapon system. We have provided other maintenance support for Saudi aircraft, for other Saudi elements, because those are our airplanes that we sold them.

 Gen. McKenzie: [00:15:26] If we stop that maintenance support, those airplanes will not fly and they're not going to be able to fly without some form of continued contract maintenance support. Now, we have also withdrawn a level of support from the Saudis, particularly some of the aerial refueling that we did for them that allowed them to strike into Yemen that no longer occurs. We still work very hard to assist the Saudis as they look at their targeting process, the process by which you determine what you're going to bomb, because we always want to try to prevent collateral damage. We want to try to help the Saudis not have a law of war violation. We want to do all those things. We are not involved in that process, but we do a number of things designed to help them in their targeting process, and that continues as it does with other nations in the region as well. But Saudis, as you know, is a particularly fraught example because of all of the attention that's been levied on them as a result of the Khashoggi killing and everything else associated with that.

Gen. McKenzie: [00:16:21] But we still have, at my level, the chief of defense level. And I talked as the CENTCOM commander. I talked to the chief of defense frequently, certainly probably every other week. I saw him every couple of months. When I went into the region, I would try to get to Riyadh as often as I could. So we kept a very good relationship. And again, we don't check our values when we give someone a weapon, which is probably what makes us a little different from the Chinese and the Russians. And sometimes that results in frustration for the nation that's buying the weapon. And so at the middle to middle level, the point I would make to them was, look, certainly you may not be happy with some of the restrictions we're putting on you with this weapon, but you need to understand that we're selling you the best weapons in the world. And not only do you get the best weapons in the world, you get the security that comes with an American weapons system. All the training, all the support. Many nations in the region have found that buying non US weapons might have been satisfying in the moment, but very unsatisfying in the long term.

Amb. Henzel: [00:17:16] Congress designed US weapons sales. The laws governing it is sort of a dual key system. Even if there weren't already doing it, State and DOD would have to cooperate on that. I got Saudi Arabia's DCM in 2016. I found that there was always a great relationship with CENTCOM on this. I also was dealing with from the very beginning, this problem of civilian casualties that resulted from Saudi air operations in Yemen. It was one of the biggest problems in the relationship, the number one cause of congressional. Up until tonight, both state and DOD did a lot with the Saudis to try to help them manage this problem in the sense of doing a better job on their targeting. I'm not an apologist for the Saudis, but I just think having seen that process, I think they slowly got better at it. Unfortunately, congressional unhappiness with the relationship with Saudi Arabia kept growing. Then the Khashoggi thing came. And then you just had sort of a tidal wave of criticism. Up until then, the Trump administration had been taking a lot of flak defending the US-Saudi relationship, despite these problems and despite a lot of private behind the scenes criticism. But then at that point, even the Trump administration had to end the US refueling of Saudi combat aircraft. 

Amb. Henzel: [00:18:43] Referred to. Then shortly after that, we had the Biden administration with President Biden. One of the first things he did on coming into office was announcing supposedly cutting off US involvement in the Saudis campaign in Yemen, which I think to certain factions in Washington was very emotionally satisfying, but there was less to it than met the eye. And even much of what met the eye has had to be walked back since then because as I had been saying, and many others like me, the US has a lot at stake in the region. It's not just about Yemen, it's not just about feeling good about our indirect connection to the Yemen conflict. The military relationship with Saudi Arabia, the overall relationship we can see today from what's happening remains important. President Biden is about to make a visit there. This after having said during the campaign that he would be treating the Saudis as a pariah. We've seen since then that again, it may feel good to say these things, but when you're trying to manage the entire region the way the US has to, or at least as long as you accept that the US has to manage the region. Certain things follow from that and one of them is working with the Saudis.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:19:56] General, you mentioned those cross-border attacks by the Houthis into Saudi Arabia and the UAE. How significant were these attacks in terms of Houthi military capability?

 Gen. McKenzie: [00:20:11] Those are pretty significant. The Houthis were aiming to kill people with those attacks. They were not aiming to do a demonstration. They were aiming to go after Al Dhafra airfield. They were aiming to go after other places where there were not only Americans, but also a large UAE population. So these were attacks that were meant to cause damage, and they demonstrated a very capable ballistic missile capability and launching those attacks many hundreds of kilometers. Why did they launch those attacks? I think they launched the most recent round of attacks that occurred much earlier this year as a result of setbacks on the battlefield that occurred up in the northern part of Yemen, where forces that were associated with UAE support, the so called Giants Brigades, gave them a little bit of a bloody nose around Marib. And the Houthis had had a little bit of what we call in the military "victory disease." The idea that you're being successful, you'll always be successful. Well, no, that's not actually the way the battlefield works. And it turned against them and they got they got hurt a little bit up there. So I think they reached out to demonstrate to UAE that they were angry. As always, there were probably a couple of other things behind that, probably prompting by Iran to do that for several different reasons.

 Gen. McKenzie: [00:21:22] But Iran's hand, you always have to look for that. What saved this from becoming a significant loss of life was the fact that the US built fad, the theater high altitude engagement system that we have sold, UAE was able to do a successful intercept. Additionally, local Patriot batteries were able to follow up as the debris fell to Earth and in fact prevented any really significant damage from occurring. It's not that we dodged the bullet there, but we did, in fact, show that we were able to defend ourselves with the fact that the Houthis attack was significant. Now, if we turn to Saudi Arabia, they the Houthis have fired hundreds of missiles into Saudi Arabia and hundreds of unmanned aerial attack systems, UAVs, unmanned drones, if you will. And they have had varying degrees of success with that. The Saudis have for really several years now and under constant bombardment, a lot of it in the southwest part of Saudi Arabia. But they have struck up as far north as Riyadh and even further up in the northeast part of Saudi Arabia as well, with long range ballistic missiles.

Gen. McKenzie: [00:22:25] Again, the Saudi response has been very good and defensively we have helped them with that in every way that we can with their significant establishment of Patriot batteries. But leakers have occurred because it is inherently easier to be on the offensive side of the equation than the defensive side of the equation, as you will appreciate, because the defender has to be lucky all the time. The attacker only has to be lucky once to get something through and on occasion they have gotten through. But the Saudis have done a very good job of defending themselves. The Saudis have also struck into Yemen at places where they suspect these missiles, where they're being built, where they're being constructed and where they're being launched. And as they do that, that's where we try to work with the Saudis to prevent them from making some of the targeting mistakes that the Ambassador and I both referred to earlier, where you're actually hitting innocent people instead of the targets that you want to hit. The Houthi offensive capability is actually impressive, but it is capability that has been brought into fed into Yemen by Iran that's been modified on the ground by the Houthis that has been turned on its neighbors.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:23:25] Ambassador, I wanted to ask you, what was the reaction within Saudi Arabia to attacks on its critical infrastructure? 

Amb. Henzel: [00:23:32] The first missiles started to hit around Jeddah, and at first, the Saudis pretty much denied that it was happening. Then the Houthis capabilities improved. Further, they were able to launch missiles. We are, as the general mentioned, the Patriot batteries did an outstanding job. But you can't hide from the public that that's happening. So at that point, the Saudis had to admit it was clearly very embarrassing. I'm sure privately they were infuriated as the Houthies meant it to be, I mean, was meant to humiliate the Saudis. So the Saudis made it a high priority to try to intercept those missiles, to try to hit them inside Yemen and stop it. As the general mentioned, it's it's low cost, relatively to the Iranians and the Houthis to do this, and at least in terms of prestige, is a high vulnerability for the Saudis. 

Amb. McCarthy: [00:24:21] The Trump administration designated the Houthis as a terrorist group, but the Biden administration reversed that decision, though some individuals are still under sanctions. What was the reason for this reversal, in your opinion?

Amb. Henzel: [00:24:37] Well, the option of designating the Houthis as a terrorist group was debated inside the bureaucracy for several years. One side advocates for designation said it would help isolate the groups further. It was something the Saudis and the UAE sought as a way of pressuring the Houthis in negotiations. Those opposed and I was one of those argued that we had heard from our lawyers that designation, even if it were administered as carefully as possible, would probably interfere with the delivery of humanitarian assistance and commercial supplies of food, because that's still even today, the majority of food going into Yemen goes on commercial terms and financing and insurance would become harder to get a whole bunch of problems stemming from that. In the end, I think the Trump administration did it toward the end of their term because the Saudis and the UAE really wanted it. The Saudis and UAE argued successfully would provide them some leverage that would help them force these into a deal. And as you mentioned, the Biden administration promptly reversed that. In my view, that was the worst of both worlds. It would have been better if we just never done anything in the first place. But here we are. And as you mentioned, there still are a number of Houthi leaders who have been designated individually, and the Biden administration still has the option to designate more.

 Amb. McCarthy: [00:26:03] Within Yemen, we have two groups, violent extremist groups, AQAP and ISIS. Can you talk a little bit about the threat that these groups pose to the U.S. and how the U.S. with Saudi Arabia and Yemeni forces on the ground shared an interest in countering them?

Gen. McKenzie: [00:26:24] ISIS in the Arabian Peninsula and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula remain key targets for the United States. We look very hard to determine where they are, what they're doing, what their intentions are, because they do retain aspirations to attack our homeland from the Arabian Peninsula. So we work very hard to get after targets that we can identify when that appears. At the same time, they also pose significant local threats not only to our forces in the region, but to those of the countries that are there as well. What we have found is that we're getting good cooperation from the Saudis and from UAE when they had significant forces there and in fact, from the rightful government of Yemen to go against these forces as the battlefield fortunes have waxed and waned, as the Houthis have gained ground is ungoverned, space has opened, if you will. It becomes harder to get after some of these targets. I think we would be better with a legitimate government of whatever character in place that's going to cover that ground there, because the ground that has no form of governance or that is ground that is challenged is ground where ISIS and al Qaeda will find places to flourish. You know, I think taking the long term at it and it's really the ambassador's wheelhouse and not in. Obviously, a negotiated settlement under the auspices of the UN would probably be the very best way to get at not only the suffering that's there now, but would also deal with approximate causes of why ISIS and Al Qaida are able to flourish on the peninsula.

Amb. Henzel: [00:27:46] Second, all of that and there's always was a lot of criticism of the legitimate government. It used to be the Hadi government, much of it certainly deserved. But for all that it was and still is, I think, a good counterterrorism partner. The Saudis were the sponsors of Yemeni forces on the ground in certain parts of the country, the UAE. And another part, each Arab peninsula government with its partners on the ground, worked with the US to try to advance our counterterrorism role. So again, that was a very important part of US policy in Yemen, which you don't hear about too much in public. I hope it continues successful. In an ideal world, there would be a peace settlement that involved something like it was envisioned by the UN several years ago. I think that's starting to look more and more remote. So I think we're going to have to continue. The US government is going to have to continue this sort of patchwork counterterrorism policy in Yemen with whichever partners are available pretty much indefinitely.

 Amb. McCarthy: [00:28:46] Wanted to switch now to the humanitarian crisis in the country. Yemen is a country with rampant poverty. The economy has suffered also by enforcement of a U.N. mandated embargo on the shipment of arms and some shipments of fuel. There have been further disruptions basically coming from the division of the country into areas run by competing authorities or no authorities. And now out of a population of approximately 30 million, over half are eligible for international assistance and 4 million are internally displaced. COVID is only exacerbated this situation. So let me start with you, Ambassador. The U.S. has continued to provide humanitarian assistance with some interruptions throughout the crisis on an average of about $640 million a year. How did you manage the negotiations to get this assistance into Yemen?

Amb. Henzel: [00:29:40] It's US policy to deliver humanitarian assistance where it's needed, no matter who the de facto authorities on the ground are. So that meant that since the Houthis control about 80% of Yemen's population, that's where the bulk of our assistance is going. And of course, it wasn't just the United States. There is a large international donor community that includes Saudi contributions around the same scale as US contributions and also large contributions from European governments, UAE, and others. There was some very good UN leadership on the ground, at least during my tenure, who helped coordinate all this. We worked in support of them. One of the big challenges we faced during my time would have been probably starting in 19, going into 20, was that the Houthis were using various means to extort money and supplies out of the relief effort. They would levy a dozen little taxes and tolls on every truck headed to where it was needed. They would require international relief implementers to hire U.S. officials for no show jobs. They would make a lot of money off of this. It was actually one of the biggest sources of income for their war effort. So eventually it got to the point where something had to be done. We worked with the UN to try to line up all the other major donors. It was not easy to present a united front to the Houthis and to convince them that we meant business. The World Food Program was very good on this, especially. At a certain point, you might remember news reports about this, US and a few other donors announced that assistance was being suspended in some types of assistance in some of the areas as a means of pressuring them to stop this thievery. We did have some success pushing back on the problem. I'm glad we were able to make that mostly work.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:31:40] You mentioned the U.N. and obviously the U.N. has played an extremely important role in the Yemen crisis, both on the humanitarian assistance and at the political level. It's had four special envoys for Yemen since 2015. In 2018, the Yemeni government and the Houthis signed a U.N. brokered Stockholm Accord, but it didn't work. And then more recently, as we mentioned earlier in April of this year, a two month truce was negotiated by the U.N. between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis. Can you each comment a bit on this U.N. role and how the U.S. worked with the U.N. to seek to come to some sort of attempts, to come to some sort of resolution to the conflict? 

Amb. Henzel: [00:32:28] The U.N. has had several very talented special envoys working on this. Actually, early on, it was Ismail, and then starting I think in late 2018, there was Martin Griffiths, a British diplomat, and he was in the role throughout my tenure until I finished in 21. Very energetic, very knowledgeable, very skillful. I tried to support his efforts very often. That meant by working with the Saudis when they were reluctant to go along with what he was proposing in order to understand the conflict. You have to recognize that the key outside players are Saudi Arabia and Iran. If there was ever going to be a settlement of some kind, it was going to require that the Saudis succeed in convincing the Houthis that it was in their interest to reach a deal that certainly the Iranians wouldn't be happy with. Now, that doesn't mean a complete break with you. That would be too much to hope for, I think. But the Saudis were trying constantly in their direct engagement with forces to get the Houthis to recognize that they had an interest in peace and that the Saudis were willing to recognize some key role in Yemen. So now we have the cease fire.

Amb. Henzel: [00:33:40] I don't have any inside info on this anymore, but I strongly suspect that what happened was the Saudis decided to give the Houthis at least what they wanted in the interim, which was opening up the airport. Up until then, the Saudis to control the airspace and more or less opening the seaport. And then leaving the Houthis in control of what they had in Yemen, which is about 80% of the population. This means the Houthis, their de facto state at this point. They've got more or less secure borders and access to the outside world. This is something the Saudis for a long time said they couldn't live with, but it looks like maybe now they're willing to live with it. I think once that understanding was reached between the Saudis and the Houthis, both parties probably turned to the UN and said, okay, we're ready to formalize this publicly in the UN. I think very actually was able to quickly wrap that up. I hope the UN and other actors are able to make this whole. It certainly held for longer than any ceasefire since early 2016, so that's a sign of some hope.

Gen. McKenzie: [00:34:45] It's been my judgment at the military level, which is the level I engage at. But occasionally above that level that the Saudis have wanted the deal for some time. They recognize the way they look in the public eye as a result of actions that they've taken in Yemen. At the same time, they also very much aware of the constant attacks they get from the Houthis. So I think the Saudis have very seriously wanted to cut a deal for a period of time with the Houthis. The actor who has no interest in a deal because it doesn't serve their larger purpose in the region is Iran. And as the Ambassador noted, that's the other party to the equation. So the Houthis have to sort of square that. I felt for a long time and we talked a little bit about it earlier, the Houthis were on a run of victory that I think gave them a little bit of hubris as they approached this endgame equation. And now maybe they've sort of re-entered. I hope they have that their long term interests actually are not the interests of Iran, but it will come down to the Houthi ability, as the ambassador noted, to determine what is in the realm of the possible for them in Yemen and how much are they actually going to depend on Iran.

 Gen. McKenzie: [00:35:44] But let's remember that Iran actually, to the best of my knowledge, I don't believe Iran has ever delivered anything in the humanitarian line into Yemen. Every bit of Iranian aid over the past several years has been uniquely lethal and designed to kill people. So as the Houthis calculate starvation, as they calculate the future of their country, that might be something they would want to bear in mind. But I do think we're in as good a place as certainly I have seen like the ambassador. I'm not in it day to day now anymore, but I'm pleased that this truce seems to be holding. It looks like the best way forward. And I will tell you how organizations like CENTCOM support our diplomats. We attempt through our intelligence processes. We can give good observation. Is the ceasefire holding or people doing what they say they're doing? If the line of control or whatever you want to call it supposed to be here, is that actually being respected? So what we do is we actually arm the people that are doing the work here, which is the US diplomatic element of power with the facts that they need to be able to marshal good arguments as they work with all the parties to the conflict.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:36:45] Well, to wrap up, I wanted to ask one last question. You worked closely together on this crisis. What lesson or two would you like to pass on to the rising leaders, both on the diplomatic and our military side, who eventually will be in your shoes? 

Gen. McKenzie: [00:37:04] So I would say a couple of things. You have to communicate. You have to keep the pathways open. And because it's easy, particularly if you're in a difficult situation like Ambassador Hensel was, where you're in another embassy, you've got to reach out. You've got to maintain those lines of communication first and second for a combatant commander. And I think we're actually pretty good at knowing and understanding this leadership on these issues largely comes from the Department of State, and we need to recognize that. And it all works better for us if State is able to get to a solution rather than we have to impose a military solution. So the military element of national power should be supportive in this regard. And that's borne out for me in Yemen in every case, but also across the region. So those are the future CENTCOM commanders. Those are the things that I would tell them. It's uniquely challenging, but it also comes back to human relationships. You have to have a level of trust. You have to be able to share information. And I think it's very important.

Amb. Henzel: [00:38:00] I just want to take this opportunity to thank the General for all the great support his team gave me during my time out there. I think it's key that the state and DOD elements are able to work together. I think it's because General McKenzie made a clear message down through his organization. I had fantastic cooperation, communications with all the military that I was dealing with. I also found it very useful that the general convened, I think it was every month, kind of a Yemen secure video conference, and all of his team were there on the line, I think at reinforced to them what the boss wanted as far as the relationship there. So I would just encourage anybody who's moving into kind of job I was in to keep up that close relationship, make sure that your subordinates understand that they're supposed to respect the military and that we rely on them a lot and make sure they also understand all the different resources that the military has so that they can best work with. 

Amb. McCarthy: [00:38:57] Great words of wisdom. Thank you, General. Thank you, Ambassador. We very much appreciate you sharing your time, your wisdom and some lessons learned for rising leaders. This has been a new episode in the series, The General and the Ambassador. Thank you for listening. The series is a production of the American Academy of Diplomacy. This podcast was produced with the support of Dataminr, a leading artificial intelligence platform that delivers real time breaking news alerts to help you make critical decisions and respond with speed and confidence. You can find our podcasts on all major podcast sites and on our website GeneralAmbassadorPodcast.org. Do follow us on Twitter and Facebook. We welcome input and suggestions for the program. You can email us directly at General.Ambassador.Podcast@gmail.com.