DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A mysterious airstrip being built on a remote island in Yemen is nearing completion, satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press show, one of several built in a nation mired in a stalemated war threatening to reignite.

The airstrip on Abd al-Kuri Island, which rises out of the Indian Ocean near the mouth of the Gulf of Aden, could provide a key landing zone for military operations patrolling that waterway. That could be useful as commercial shipping through the Gulf and Red Sea — a key route for cargo and energy shipments heading to Europe — has halved under attacks by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. The area also has seen weapons smuggling from Iran to the rebels.

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

While the Houthis have linked their campaign to the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, experts worry a ceasefire in that conflict may not be enough to see the rebels halt a campaign that’s drawn them global attention. Meanwhile, the Houthis have lobbed repeated attacks at Israel, as well as U.S. warships operating in the Red Sea, raising fears that one may make it through and endanger the lives of American service members.

A battlefield miscalculation by Yemen’s many adversarial parties, new fatal attacks on Israel or a deadly assault on an American warship easily could shatter the country’s relative calm. And it remains unclear just how President-elect Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated on Monday, will handle the emboldened rebel group.

“The Houthis feed off war — war is good for them,” said Wolf-Christian Paes, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies who studies Yemen. “Finally they can live up to their slogan, which famously, of course, declares, ‘Death to America, death to the Jews.’ They see themselves as being in this epic battle against their archenemies and from their view, they’re winning.”

Satellite images show airstrip nearly complete

Satellite photos taken Jan. 7 by Planet Labs PBC for the AP show trucks and other heavy equipment on the north-south runway built into Abd al-Kuri, which is about 35 kilometers (21 miles) in length and about 5 kilometers (3 miles) at its widest point.

The runway has been paved, with the designation markings “18” and “36″ to the airstrip’s north and south respectively. As of Jan. 7, there was still a segment missing from the 2.4-kilometer- (1.5-mile-) long runway that’s 45-meters (150-feet) wide. Trucks could be seen grading and laying asphalt over the missing 290-meter (950-foot) segment.

Once completed, the runway’s length would allow private jets and other aircraft to land there, though likely not the largest commercial aircraft or heavy bombers given its length.

While within Houthi drone and missile range, the distance of Abd al-Kuri from mainland Yemen means “there’s no threat of the Houthis getting on a pickup truck or a technical and going to seize it,” said Yemen expert Mohammed al-Basha of the Basha Report risk advisory firm.

The United Nations’ Montreal-based International Civil Aviation Organization, which assigns its own set of airport codes for airfields around the world, had no information about the airstrip on Abd al-Kuri, spokesman William Raillant-Clark said. Yemen, as a member state to ICAO, should provide information about the airfield to the organization. Nearby Socotra Island already has an airport declared to the ICAO.

It’s not the only airfield to see an expansion in recent years. In Mocha on the Red Sea, a project to extend that city’s airport now allows it to land far larger aircraft. Local officials attributed that project to the UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms home to Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The airfield also sits on a similar north-south path as the Abd al-Kuri airstrip and is roughly the same length.

Other satellite photos from Planet Labs show yet another unclaimed runway currently under construction just south of Mocha near Dhubab, a coastal town in Yemen’s Taiz governorate. An image taken by Planet for the AP on Thursday showed the runway fully built, though no markings were painted on it.

A key location for a country riven by war

Abd al-Kuri is part of the Socotra Archipelago, separated from Africa by only 95 kilometers (60 miles) and from Yemen by some 400 kilometers (250 miles). In the last decade of the Cold War, the archipelago occasionally hosted Soviet warships due to its strategic location.

In recent years, the island has been overseen by Yemen’s Southern Transitional Council, which advocates for Yemen to again split into a separate 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 seized Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in 2014.

The UAE, home to the massive Jebel Ali port in Dubai and the logistic firm DP World, previously built a base in Eritrea that was later dismantled and attempted to build an airstrip on Mayun, or Perim, Island, in the center of the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

But unlike those efforts, the Emiratis appear likely to open the Abd al-Kuri airstrip — and have even signed their work. Just east of the runway, piles of dirt there have spelled out “I LOVE UAE” for months.

An Emirati-flagged landing craft also was spotted off the coast of Abd al-Kuri in January 2024 and off Socotra multiple other times in the year, according to data analyzed by AP from MarineTraffic.com. That vessel previously has been associated with the UAE’s military operations in Yemen.

The UAE, which runs a once-a-week flight to Socotra via Abu Dhabi, have long described their efforts as aimed at getting aid to the archipelago. Asked for comment about the Abd al-Kuri airfield, the UAE similarly pointed to its aid operations.

“Any presence of the UAE … is based on humanitarian grounds that is carried out in cooperation with the Yemen government and local authorities,” the Emirati government said in a statement.

“The UAE remains steadfast in its commitment to all international endeavors aimed at facilitating the resumption of the Yemeni political process, thereby advancing the security, stability and prosperity sought by the Yemeni populace.”

The Southern Transitional Council and officials with Yemen’s exiled government did not respond to repeated requests for comments over the airfield. The UAE’s presence on Socotra has sparked tensions in the past, something the Houthis have used to portray the Emiratis as trying to colonize the island.

“This plan represents a serious violation of Yemeni sovereignty and threatens the sovereignty of several neighboring countries through the espionage and sabotage operations it is expected to carry out,” the Houthi-controlled SABA news agency said in November.

Smuggling route passes by the island

A new airport on Abd al-Kuri could provide a new, secluded landing zone for surveillance flights around Socotra Island. That could be vital to interdict weapons smuggling from Iran to the Houthis, who remain under a U.N. arms embargo.

A report to the U.N. Security Council said a January 2024 weapons seizure by the U.S. military took place off Socotra near Abd al-Kuri. That seizure, which saw two U.S. Navy SEALs lost at sea and presumed killed, involved a traditional dhow vessel that U.S. prosecutors say was involved in multiple smuggling trips on behalf of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard to the Houthis.

Disrupting that weapons route, as well as the ongoing attacks by the U.S., Israel and others on the Houthis, likely have contributed to the slowing pace of the rebels’ attacks in recent months. The U.S. and its partners alone have struck the Houthis over 260 times, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Next week, Trump will be the one to decide what happens to that campaign. He has experience already with how difficult fighting in Yemen can be — his first military action in his first term in 2017 saw a Navy SEAL killed in a raid on a suspected al-Qaida compound. The raid also killed more than a dozen civilians, including an 8-year-old girl.

Trump may reapply a foreign terrorist organization designation on the Houthis that Biden revoked, a reimposition that the UAE backs. Marco Rubio, who Trump has nominated to be secretary of state, mentioned the Houthis several times when testifying Wednesday at his Senate confirmation hearing alongside what he described as threats from Iran and its allies.

Any U.S. move could escalate the war, even with the Houthi’s enigmatic supreme leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, pledging Thursday night to halt the rebels’ attacks if a ceasefire deal is reached in Gaza.

“I don’t see a way in 2025 that we have a de-escalation with the Houthis,” said al-Basha, the Yemen expert. “The situation in Yemen is very tense. An outbreak in the war could be a reality in the next few months. I don’t foresee the status quo continuing.”

Brazil’s Supreme Court on Thursday denied a request by former President Jair Bolsonaro to temporarily restore his passport so that he could attend the inauguration in Washington of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump next week.

Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who Bolsonaro frequently has called his personal foe, said in the ruling that Bolsonaro currently holds no position that would allow him to represent Brazil at the event and that the former president did not adequately prove to the court that he had been invited.

HOW BRAZILIAN POLICE SAY BOLSONARO PLOTTED A COUP TO STAY IN OFFICE

Bolsonaro, under several wide-ranging investigations including over an alleged attempt to stay in office despite his electoral defeat, had his passport seized by federal police last February because he was considered a flight risk. He denies the allegations against him.

Bolsonaro responded to the verdict Thursday on X by accusing Brazil’s judicial system of political persecution against him, comparing his situation to legal cases in the U.S. against Trump. He said that Trump “overcame the judicial activism. I too will overcome it.”

The former Brazilian president had requested permission to leave the country from Jan. 17 to 22 to attend the inauguration ceremony on Jan. 20 and a Hispanic inaugural ball. Bolsonaro, an outspoken admirer of Trump, said on his social media channels on Jan. 8 that he was “very happy with this invitation.”

“I’ll be representing the conservative, the right-wing, the good, the Brazilian people there in the United States, God willing,” Bolsonaro said.

When de Moraes asked Bolsonaro’s lawyers for evidence of his invitation on Saturday, they forwarded an invitation letter signed by inauguration committee co-chairs Steve Witkoff and Kelly Loeffler.

Still, de Moraes argued that Bolsonaro had not adequately proven that he was invited to the inauguration. In the ruling, de Moraes followed the recommendation of Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet, who said Wednesday that Bolsonaro’s private interest in the trip did not outweigh the public interest in prohibiting him from traveling abroad.

De Moraes said Bolsonaro remains a flight risk and added that the former president has advocated that his supporters who face legal troubles in cases involving their political allegiance should leave the country and seek asylum. Hundreds of Bolsonaro’s supporters involved in Jan. 8, 2023 riots in capital Brasilia have left Brazil to avoid prosecution.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will not attend Trump’s inauguration.

Federal police seized Bolsonaro’s passport in Feb. 2024, during a raid related to the investigation into whether he and top aides plotted to ignore the 2022 election results and stage an uprising to keep the defeated right-wing leader in power.

Brazil’s Supreme Court previously has denied a Bolsonaro request to retrieve his passport, in March 2024, following an invitation from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Last November, federal police formally accused Bolsonaro and 36 others, including high-ranking military officers, of attempting a coup. Gonet, the prosecutor-general, will decide whether to charge Bolsonaro or toss the investigation.

Legal experts believe Bolsonaro could be charged and stand trial in the second half of 2025 at the Supreme Court for allegedly falsifying his COVID-19 vaccination status. Analysts also say there’s a reasonable chance he stands trial before 2026 over allegedly embezzling jewels gifted by Saudi Arabian authorities.

The former president denies that he tried to stay in office after his narrow electoral defeat in 2022 to his leftist opponent, Lula.

The Brazilian ambassador to the U.S., Maria Luiza Viotti, will attend Trump’s inauguration, the government told The Associated Press on Thursday. President Lula was not officially invited to the ceremony.

Trump has invited some global leaders to his inauguration, including China’s President Xi Jinping and Argentina’s President Javier Milei.

Reports have swirled for weeks that Italy is currently in talks with several private companies, including Elon Musk’s Space X, over a deal involving country’s telecoms security system.

Such a deal would mean that SpaceX would provide encryption services for the Italian government and communications infrastructure for the military and emergency service — potentially over a competing European Union project set to launch in 2029.

Leader Giorgia Meloni has admitted her government is in talks with several private companies, including SpaceX, but generally pushed back on rumours over the project.

She has denied both that a deal has been reached and that she has had any private discussions with Musk, with whom she has a friendship. In January, her office issued a statement saying the matter had not been discussed in the recent meeting between Giorgia Meloni and Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago.

When asked by reporters, Meloni said any potential deal would be firmly based on “national interests.”

Her position was echoed by Giangiacomo Calovini, an MP for the Bothers of Italy party, who told Euronews, “let’s clarify things, the government has not signed anything, even though exchanges and relations between Rome and Washington are strong.”

The politician said that Meloni was “acting in Italy’s and Europe’s best interests. We’ll evaluate which solution will be the best, while waiting for Europe to possibly offer its guarantees, both on a technical and security level, which are not in place yet.”

Calvoni’s comments point to the IRIS², the EU’s 10 billion multi-orbital constellation of 290 satellites, which won’t be fully operational before 2030.

The project is one of the main pillars of the EU’s defence strategy and will also be available to private customers. Italy is widely expected to be participant in the project, to which EU member states can sign additional contracts at a national level.

However, with speculation over a competing deal with Musk, the tech billionaire’s Italian representative Andrea Stroppa has responded to what a deal between SpaceX and Italy would look like. Stroppa has said that Italy would have full control of its data.

He also added that Elon Musk himself does not decide whether the Starlink satellite system is turned on or off. Stroppa further pointed out the cost-effectiveness of Starlink’s services compared with other competitors including the EU.

Frediano Finucci, a journalist and author who recently wrote a book titled “The Great Game of Satellite” told Euronews, “preserving communications security is a strategic asset and it’s a question of trust.”

”Italy uses satellite communications for the military provided by both Italy and France, a country with which Italy has argued in the past, although Italy trusts France. Now having to rely on external provider like the US, it’s not about mistrust, as the US is also an ally. However as Meloni said, the problem is not that it’s American technology, the issue is that Elon Musk is behind it.”

Finucci also pointed to the fact that even if data in the deal with SpaceX is encrypted and secure, Starlink could still detect unusual communication patterns.

“Starlink would still have the ability to detect whether an unusual amount of communication is being sent from either an embassy or a military ship, similar to what occurred between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when embassy staff used telegraphs to send diplomatic dispatches between capitals,” Finucci said.

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”Spies would stand in front of telegraphs, and if there was too much activity, they would suspect something was not right. It’s impossible to prevent Starlink from keeping track of traffic”.

From a political perspective, a potential deal with SpaceX could have several consequences. Giovanni Orsina from Luiss University told Euronews, “If a deal were signed it would further signal close personal relations betwen Meloni, Musk, and Trump.”

“It would be interesting to see if any tensions arise between Italy and Europe. Right now, Italy is caught between the US and Europe.”

Professor Orsina believes it’s too early to predict when a potential deal with Starlink might be finalised as the operation is still under review.

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However it’s still possible that the Italian government may have wanted to delay taking a decision until after Trump’s inauguration next week.