Dubai, United Arab Emirates—— Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press show a mysterious airstrip under construction on a remote island in Yemen is nearing completion, one of several airstrips being built in a country locked in a deadlock that threatens to reignite fighting.

The airstrip on Abdul Khouri Island is located in the Indian Ocean near the mouth of the Gulf of Aden and could provide a key landing zone for military operations patrolling the waterway. That could be useful because commercial shipping through the Gulf and Red Sea - key routes for cargo and energy shipments to Europe - has been cut by half amid attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. The region has also seen weapons smuggling from Iran to the rebels.

The runway was likely built by the United Arab Emirates, which has long been suspected of expanding its military presence in the region and supporting the Saudi-led war against the Houthis.

While the Houthis have linked their actions to the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, experts worry that a ceasefire in the conflict may not be enough for the rebels to halt an operation that has attracted global attention. At the same time, the Houthis have repeatedly launched attacks on Israel and U.S. warships operating in the Red Sea, raising concerns that the Houthis may succeed in passing and endanger the lives of U.S. service members.

Miscalculations on the battlefield by Yemen's many rival parties, a new deadly attack on Israel or a deadly attack on a U.S. warship could easily shatter the country's relative calm. It's unclear how President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office on Monday, will deal with the emboldened insurgent group.

“The Houthis live by war – war is good for them,” said Wolf-Christian Paes, a senior fellow on Yemen at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "They were finally able to live up to their slogan, which, of course, was the famous slogan of 'Death to America, death to the Jews.'" They thought they were in this epic battle with their old enemy, and from their perspective, they is winning. "

Satellite photos taken by Planet Labs PBC for The Associated Press on Jan. 7 show trucks and other heavy equipment on the north and south runways built by Abdul Khouri, which is about 35 kilometers (21 miles) long and about 5 meters long. km (3 mi) ) at its widest point.

The runway has been paved and marked with "18" and "36" on the north and south sides of the airport, respectively. As of January 7, a section of the 2.4 kilometers (1.5 miles) long and 45 meters (150 feet) wide runway was still missing. Trucks can be seen grading and laying asphalt on the missing 290 meters (950 feet) of road.

Once completed, the length of the runway will allow private jets and other aircraft to land there, although probably not the largest commercial aircraft or heavy bombers given its length.

Mohammed Basha, an expert on Yemen issues, said that within the range of Houthi drones and missiles, Abdul Quri’s distance from the Yemeni mainland means that “the Houthis will not board pickup trucks or technical vehicles and The threat of seizing it”. Basha Report Risk Consulting Company.

William Raillant-Clark, a spokesman for the Montreal-based U.N. International Civil Aviation Organization, which assigns its own set of airport codes to airports around the world, said there were no reports of Abdelku Airport information. As a member state of ICAO, Yemen should provide information about airports to the organization. The nearby island of Socotra already has an airport declared to ICAO.

This isn't the only airport to expand in recent years. In Mocha on the Red Sea coast, an expansion project at the city's airport can now land larger planes. Local officials credited the project to the United Arab Emirates, a federation of seven emirates that owns Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The airport is also located on a similar north-south path as Abdul Quli Airport and is approximately the same length.

Additional satellite photos from Planet Labs show another unclaimed runway currently under construction south of Mocha near the coastal town of Dubab in Yemen's Taiz province. A photo taken by The Planet for The Associated Press on Thursday showed the runway fully built but with no markings painted on it.

Abdel Khoury is part of the Socotra Islands, just 95 kilometers (60 miles) from Africa and about 400 kilometers (250 miles) from Yemen. During the last decade of the Cold War, the archipelago was occasionally stationed by Soviet warships due to its strategic location.

In recent years, the island has been overseen by the Southern Yemen Transitional Council, which advocates for Yemen to be divided again into north and south, as it was during the Cold War. The UAE has backed and armed the council as part of the Saudi-led war against the Houthis, who captured the Yemeni capital Sanaa in 2014.

The UAE, home to Dubai's massive Jebel Ali port and logistics company DP World, previously built a base in Eritrea, which was later dismantled, and is seeking to build an airport on Mayun or Pellin islands in the strategic heart of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. between the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

But unlike those efforts, the UAE appears likely to open Abdul Quri airstrip and has even signed off on their work. Just east of the runway, piles of dirt have been reading "I Love Emirates" for months.

In January 2024, a UAE-flagged landing craft was also spotted off the coast of Abdel Khoury, and it visited Socotra several times during the year, according to data analyzed by The Associated Press' MarineTraffic.com Found nearby. The ship has previously been linked to UAE military operations in Yemen.

The UAE, which has one weekly flight to Socotra via Abu Dhabi, has long described its efforts as aimed at providing aid to the archipelago. The UAE also referred to its aid operations when asked for comment on Abdul Quri Airport.

"Any UAE presence... is based on humanitarian grounds and is conducted in cooperation with the Yemeni government and local authorities," the UAE government said in a statement.

“The UAE remains firmly committed to all international efforts aimed at promoting the resumption of Yemen’s political process, thereby promoting the security, stability and prosperity that the Yemeni people seek.”

Officials from the Southern Transitional Council and Yemen's government-in-exile did not respond to repeated requests for comment about the airport. The UAE's presence in Socotra has stoked tensions in the past, with the Houthis using it to describe the UAE's attempts to colonize the island.

"This plan seriously violates Yemen's sovereignty and threatens the sovereignty of several neighboring countries through expected espionage and sabotage activities," the Houthi-controlled Saba news agency said in November.

The new airport in Abdel Khoury could provide a new, secluded landing zone for reconnaissance flights around Socotra. This is crucial to stopping the smuggling of weapons from Iran to the Houthis, who remain under a United Nations arms embargo.

A report submitted to the United Nations Security Council said that the US military seized weapons in the waters off Socotra Island near Abdul Khouri in January 2024. The seizure involved a traditional dhow where two U.S. Navy SEALs were missing at sea and presumed killed. U.S. prosecutors said the ship was involved in multiple smuggling operations to the Houthis on behalf of Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guards.

The disruption of weapons routes and continued attacks on the Houthis by the United States, Israel and others may have contributed to a slowdown in the insurgent attacks in recent months. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the United States and its partners alone have launched more than 260 attacks against the Houthis.

Next week, Trump will decide the outcome of that campaign. He has already experienced how difficult the fighting in Yemen can be - in 2017, during the first military operation of his first term, a SEAL was killed in a raid on a suspected al-Qaeda camp. The attack also killed a dozen civilians, including an 8-year-old girl.

Trump may reclassify the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization that Biden revoked, a redesignation supported by the United Arab Emirates. Marco Rubio, Trump's nominee for secretary of state, repeatedly mentioned the Houthis and the threat they posed from Iran and its allies while testifying at his Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday.

Any U.S. move could escalate the war, even as the Houthis' secretive supreme leader, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, pledged on Thursday night to halt rebel attacks if a ceasefire was reached in Gaza.

"I don't think our conflict with the Houthis will ease in 2025," said Basha, a Yemeni expert. "The situation in Yemen is very tense. The outbreak of war may become a reality in the next few months. I don't expect the status quo to continue. ”