Saudi Arabia has no interest in political solution to Yemeni crisis: Academic

Press TV has conducted an interview with Foad Izadi, professor at University of Tehran, to discuss the relentless Saudi military campaign against Yemen.

What follows is a rough transcript of the interview.

Press TV: To begin with, Saudi Arabia launched this war without a UN mandate, which makes this war illegal in the first place. With this in mind, what are the chances for a political solution?

Izadi: The chances are there. The problem that we have is that the Saudi government is not interested in a political solution. They want to punish the Yemeni people for one thing; to be independent of Saudi Arabia. The Saudis’ influence in Yemen dates back many decades and Yemeni people know who the Saudi kings and princes are, and they are not willing to succumb to this pressure. So they have to be punished in the mind of the Saudi government, which is very disturbing.

Your other guest talked about the humanitarian situation in Yemen…The UN World Food Program estimated that very soon we would have a famine in Yemen. Eighty percent of Yemenis need humanitarian aid. And last week, the only port city that was open to receive these types of aid was bombed by the Saudi airplanes, port city of Hodeidah. So the situation that we have in Yemen is every day 100, 200 hundred people, mostly women and children, are dying. Iran like any responsible country is asking for these savage activities to be stopped, but unfortunately we have the United States, on the first day of the attack, not only expressing support for the attack, but announcing that they are going to provide intelligence and logistic support to Saudi Arabia.

Press TV: As it has been reported, the United States and a couple of other countries in the region have also been complicit in this war. How much does the West have the political will to be part of this possible political solution?

Izadi: Right now we do not see any political will. Last week, as you might have reported, the US officially announced that 45 US military Special Forces are helping the Saudi government in its fight against Yemen.

The US is not in the mood of reaching a political settlement, the Saudis are not in the mood of reaching a political settlement and this actually will backfire in the long run. The Yemen people know who is killing them, and they know that the US is involved heavily in this carnage and massacre that is taking place every day. This is not going to be good for US or Saudi Arabia in the long run.

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