article_snippet: (CNN)Foreign intervention in Yemen's chaos has dramatically raised the stakes in the Arabian Peninsula, threatening to expand what is already a civil war into a conflict pitting Iran against Saudi Arabia and an Arab coalition.
article_snippet: Yemen is becoming the latest battleground in a contest for regional superiority between Saudi Arabia and Iran that goes back to the overthrow of the Shah during Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979.
article_snippet: Yemen now resembles Syria, or Bosnia 20 years ago: a patchwork of shifting fiefdoms where force is the only means of influence.
article_snippet: There is a real risk that Yemen will collapse as a state, with a revived independence movement in the south, the Houthis in the north, and the Sunni heartland in between.
article_snippet: It will be seen as an act of aggression by most Yemenis and risks taking the situation to a place that no-one will be able to control.
article_snippet: As in Afghanistan, factions in Yemen do not respond well to foreign intervention.
article_snippet: Yemen has history as a graveyard of foreign forces.
article_snippet: In the 1960s Egypt intervened in Yemen's civil war on behalf of the anti-royalists -- an operation that sapped the army and contributed to Yemen failure against the Israelis in the 1967 war.
article_snippet: Saudi and Iranian involvement in Yemen threatens to deepen sectarian distrust in a country where Sunni and Shia have historically not been enemies.
article_snippet: As the International Crisis Group puts it, a "long history of coexistence is beginning to break down" in Yemen.
article_snippet: The unseen hand in Yemen's collapse is former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was badly injured in a bomb attack in 2011, and
article_snippet: For the people of Yemen, the brief flash of hope that came with the Arab Spring is now a distant memory.
article_snippet: Aden has been rocked by looting and score-settling among rival clans.
article_snippet: Human rights in Yemen are in free-fall as even peaceful protest becomes a life-threatening activity," according to Said Boumedouha of Amnesty International.
article_snippet: For the past three years, different parties and factions have fought over Yemen's few assets while the standard of living of ordinary Yemenis has continued to plummet.
article_snippet: This combination of proxy wars, sectarian violence, state collapse and militia rule has become sadly familiar in the region.
highlights_snippet: Saudi intervention raises prospect of regional war between Iran and Arab states .