News - Middle East: Controversial remarks by a Zionist military analyst have sparked wide reactions after he claimed that a single Yemeni missile strike on a Saudi oil facility was enough to force Riyadh to step back from its war on Yemen, exposing what he described as the “cardboard giant” nature of Arab and Gulf armies.

In a recent episode of the British talk show The Winston Marshall Show, Zionist military expert Tal Hartov launched a harsh critique of the Arab world’s military capabilities, saying that despite their vast arsenals and billion-dollar arms purchases, Arab and Gulf states lack the ability to sustain real warfare.

Hartov argued that the purchase of advanced Western fighter jets by Gulf nations does not translate into deterrent power, adding that many of these aircraft “remain parked in hangars” with limited operational use.

He emphasized that the root of the problem lies not in hardware but in training, command, and readiness, describing it as a deep structural crisis within Arab military institutions.

Citing the war on Yemen as a defining case, Hartov said the conflict proved that military strength is not measured by spending, but by the will to resist and the ability to endure.

Referring to Yemeni missile and drone strikes deep inside Saudi territory, the Zionist official said those operations “reshaped regional deterrence equations” and “disrupted traditional power balances”, adding that “Saudi Arabia needed only one Yemeni missile hitting an oil facility to back down from the fight.”

Hartov’s remarks echo a growing trend among Israeli and Western military observers, who increasingly acknowledge Yemen’s evolving deterrent power and its impact on the regional military order.

These assessments highlight the widening gap between military spending and actual combat capability in several Arab states, where dependency on US and Western support has replaced independent defense doctrine.

Yemen’s strategic endurance and technological innovation under blockade have redefined the meaning of deterrence in the Middle East—challenging long-held assumptions about the nature of power and resilience in modern warfare.