Saudi Arabia fighting US proxy war on Yemen: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed Mark Sleboda, an international relations and security analyst, in Moscow, to discuss Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Yemen, six months into its launch.

Following is a rough transcription.

Press TV: This war has been going on for six months. To begin with, Saudi Arabia and its coalition forces are spending a whole lot of money, but not that the money is the big part, in terms of just the ammunition coming to drop these bombs all over the place, and it is said that many of it is provided or has been provided by the US or by the UK. How do you view that side of this war?

Sleboda: Well, it is certainly the truth. I mean this is a US proxy war in all but name. the fighters are being flown are of US or UK manufacturer. Obama alone sold the dictatorship of Saudi Arabia $16 billion worth of fighters in one year. They are dropping US munitions, the planes are refueled mid-air by US military aircraft and they are targeted by US military intelligence satellites. So this is really only a Saudi-led axis in name only. But certainly the arms manufacturers in the United States are sending Saudi Arabia cluster and other munitions just as quickly as the Saudi pilots drop them out of their US-made planes.

Press TV: On the political side, what Saudi Arabia has done, is the former VP has Aden days ago, along with eight of its ministers to stay there to form this future government and this would obviously be in line with putting Abd Rabbu Mansur Hadi in power. Now I’m not too sure how would that work without the participation of the Yemeni people. Just yesterday, hundreds of thousands showed up in a protest against Saudi Arabia. Does Saudi Arabia want to return this situation back to what it was before? Is that what their goal is? Because if that is indeed what it is then how is that going to work out?

Sleboda: There is no clear indication. I do not think Saudi Arabia is operating from a really full-strategy playbook here. They are seeking, as have failed in so many other times so many conflicts before, to impose a political resolution via military force on Yemen. This is compounded by the fact that the recent events over the last year, year and a half, have shown that Hadi, who from the very beginning was a Saudi and US puppet installed in Yemen, has very little if any support on the ground in the country.

Not everyone supports the Houthis as the way it is depicted in the Western media but the Ansarullah movement that led the uprising to drive Hadi out of the country is far more than just the Houthis. There are the southern Sunni tribes, there are factions all over the country and complicating matters, we also now have Al Qaeda and ISIS (Daesh) seeking to grow within the country.

So I don’t really know how Saudi Arabia seeks to restore Hadi rule to the entire country without some type of political dialogue and compromise; which is made all the more ironic because as soon as the Houthis had secured Sana’a just over six months ago, we saw that they offered a political dialogue and power sharing agreement with the deposed Hadi government and it was abruptly refused by Hadi and his Saudi Arabian controllers.

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