The U.S.S. carrier Theodore Roosevelt is heading towards the Yemeni shore to join with other American ships preparing to intercept Iranian vessels, Fox News reported on Monday, April 20.

It is believed that Iranian ships are carryng weapons to the Houthi rebels who overthrew the U.S.-backed Yemeni government last month. The Iranian-backed Houthis are attempting to gain control over Yemen.

There are currently approximately nine U.S. warships in the waters near Yemen, including cruisers and destroyers.

Saudi Arabia and Egypt are considering holding large scale military exercise, according to a Gulf Today report.

The two countries would run the training exercise in Saudi Arabia.

This could be a lead-up to a joint ground offensive in Yemen against the Iranian-backed Houthis.

Egyptian President abdel El-Sisi said on Saturday that Egypt will ensure that the El-Mandab strait remains open for traffic, stating, “El-Mandab strait is Egyptian and Arab national security,” according to an Al Ahram report.

Iranian supported Houthi rebels are trying to take over Yemen.

If Iran blocks the El-Mandab strait it would directly and disastrously affect Egypt’s Suez Canal traffic, which is Egypt’s main sources of income.

The Bab-el-Mandeb is a strait located between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula, and Djibouti and Eritrea in the Horn of Africa. It connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. It is sometimes called the Mandab Strait. The Bab-el-Mandeb acts as a strategic link between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. In 2006, an estimated 3.3 million barrels (520,000 m3) of oil passed through the strait per day, out of a world total of about 43 million barrels per day (6,800,000 m3/d) moved by tankers, according to Wikipedia.

Since the Saudi led intervention in Yemen began, Egypt has sent air and sea support to the region, but no ground troops as of yet. Sending ground troops has not been ruled out, if needed.

El-Sisi vowed to support the Arab Gulf countries, “Our benefit is in the security and stability of the Arab countries, and the whole world if possible… We will not let down our brotherly Gulf countries.”

When the people of Egypt decided to overthrow its (allegedly) democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi through a military coup, the United States was not pleased.

Never mind that Morsi, during his exceptionally short 11-month tenure as president, tore up the old constitution and began replacing it with a strict Islamist document that would hurtle Egypt back through time, negating any progress in the area of human and equal rights.

Nope. Obama and his crowd was not interested in punishing Morsi, an anti-West, anti-modernity Egyptian leader who had attained power through the revolutionary crucible of what was initially believed to be an “Arab spring.”

Instead, the U.S. punished the new democratically-elected leader, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, as his rise to power was via the military. Sisi’s, unlike Morsi’s, was not a pure people’s revolutionary paroxysm and therefore was not embraced. The U.S. punished Egypt for this unacceptable folly by imposing an arms freeze.

But on Tuesday, March 31, the White House announced that it was lifting that arms freeze. The U.S. removed its hold on the delivery of F-16 aircraft, Harpoon missiles and M1A1 tank kits, according to the New York Times.

It only took two years, but U.S. President Barack Obama spoke by phone with Sisi on Tuesday, informing the Egyptian leader that the $1.3 billion annual military assistance to Egypt would continue, despite the 2013 military coup.

In a Middle East realignment that was not what Obama envisioned nor encouraged, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have become the military counterbalances to Iran’s creeping hegemony in the region.

The Saudi Kingdom has been bombing the Iranian-backed revolutionaries in neighboring Yemen, and Egypt has hinted that it may soon send in ground troops to support the Saudi air campaign.

A Saudi-led air strike has killed at least 40 refugees in Yemen and wounded 200 others, but the coalition says Houthi terrorists were using humans as shields to cover their attacks.

Sound familiar?

A war crime is not necessarily a war crime if anyone other than Israel is defending itself against terrorists who violate the Geneva Convention by using human beings, including children, as protective shields.

The Reuters news agency quoted an unidentified humanitarian worker as saying that the airstrike hit a truck carrying Houthi militiamen near the camp’s entrance.

Foreign media have reported that the Saudi-led attack on the Yemeni camp without the usual immediate denunciation by the United Nations when Israel bombs terrorist targets.

But leave it to the Arabs to keep “Israeli war crimes” in the headlines.

PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi, despite being one of the more intelligent members of the Palestinian Authority, accused Israel of war crimes on Monday because Jerusalem granted permission for the construction of 143 new apartments in Har Homa, located north of Bethlehem.

The project is nothing new, and the permission simply places a check mark next to another bureaucratic step in Israel’s convoluted process of building a house.

For Ashrawi, it was as if Israel had bombed a refugee camp. She said:

This latest development is an additional war crime as stipulated by the Rome Statute, and the occupation authorities will be held accountable by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and other venues for its continued aggression on the lands and resources of the state of Palestine.

As of tomorrow, April Fool’s Day, the Palestinian Authority officially becomes a member of the ICC, where it can try to sue Israel for killing civilians whom Hamas used as human  shields in last summer’s war in Gaza,.

Even Amnesty, in a report last week, has admitted that Hamas and other terrorist groups violated humanitarian law by “storing rockets and other munitions in civilian buildings – including UN schools – and [that it] launched attacks or stored munitions very near locations where hundreds of displaced civilians were taking shelter.”

If the Palestinian Authority wants to go to the ICC to sue Israel for bomb including terrorists and killing civilians hidden by them, then Saudi Arabia should be next in line for the attack on Yemen’s refugee camps.

The old “double standard” could be raised, arguing that Israel is guilty because it is Israel and Saudi Arabia is innocent because it is Saudi Arabia, but that is becoming harder for foreign media to justify in the wake of continued Palestinian Authority incitement and praise for terror.

The Palestinian Authority has not reacted to the bombing of the Yemeni camp by the Saudi-led force, to which Ramallah has given its blessing, for what it is worth.

One of the Iranian regime’s mouthpieces reported has reported that the Israeli Air Force joined Saudi warplanes to bomb Yemen this week.

The article by the Fars [read: Farce”] News Agency was so ridiculous that even the less responsible news sites did not repeat the propaganda.

On the other hand, considering Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s statement earlier this week that “we see eye to eye with many of our Arab neighbors regarding the danger posed by Iran and we also view positively the benefit that this new partnership could have for the region,” perhaps the Fars report is a harbinger of the future.

Accord to Fars:

‘This is… the first time that the Zionists are conducting a joint operation in coalition with Arabs,’ Secretary General of Yemen’s Al-Haq Political Party Hassan Zayd wrote on his Facebook page.

He noted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had issued direct orders for the Israeli air force to send fighter jets to the Saudi-led air raid on Yemen.

Several reports the past three years have indicated that Saudi Arabia is willing to allow Israel to use its air space to attack Iran.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu continued to lash out at a possible “bad deal” with Iran Monday and said, “The agreement being formulated in Lausanne sends a message that there is no price for aggression and on the contrary – that Iran’s aggression is to be rewarded.”

Netanyahu said in a statement:

The moderate and responsible countries in the region, especially Israel and also many other countries, will be the first to be hurt by this agreement. One cannot understand that when forces supported by Iran continue to conquer more ground in Yemen, in Lausanne they are closing their eyes to this aggression. But we are not closing our eyes and we will continue to act against every threat in every generation, certainly in this generation.

He told the Cabinet on Sunday that the task and the agreement in the works at Lausanne are part of Iran’s axis of evil than now includes Yemen.