US arms sales policies in Mideast to backfire: Commentator

Press TV has conducted an interview with Shabbir Hassanally, political commentator from London, to ask for his take on a recent call by the Human Rights Watch (HRW) on US to stop supplying more bombs to Saudi Arabia as the kingdom continues to pound Yemen.

What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: USD 1.29 billion worth of “smart bombs” headed the way of the Saudis. How do you feel about that?

Hassanally: If one said it is tragic, it would be hilarious. First of all, the idea of smart bomb is invalid; a bomb kills, it cannot be smart, it is not sentient, [and] it is a piece of hardware.

But the idea that America right in the middle of this essentially genocide of Yemen and Yemeni people that Saudis engaged in, decides to give it, essentially give it, USD 1.29 billion worth of weaponry, it kind of reeks of the same corrupt terroristic mentality that  Washington had during the Gaza campaigns that the Zionist entity does. So it is very tragic and very stupid and it will come to bite America in the backside in the future. This is inevitable!

Press TV: Everyone has agreed that the Saudis have achieved nothing in Yemen, so just handing them more weapons, will that make a difference?

Hassanally: Of course not. The Saudis have no strategy and they have no exit plan in Yemen; a blind man can see this. To give them more weapons only allows them to commit more and more war crimes and to just kill more and more people which makes the US directly complicit in the murder of the Yemeni people. The same way, it is directly complicit in the murder of the Palestinian people and so on and so forth. It is a very strange somewhat confused mentality that the American administration has. It is almost like it does not know what to do and has this problem. It is like it has two rabid dogs; the rabid dog of the Zionist occupying Palestine and the rabid dog of the Zionist occupying Arabia and it does not quite know how to control them. In a way, it is frightened of them because there is this idea of blowback. We know that Israel has attacked America a number of times; we know that Saudi-sponsored people will, and no doubt, have attacked America many, many times in large ways and small ways and all of this. And they do not quite know what to do and they only need a reaction from these neo-cons who enjoy chaos, who do not like order. It is to just throw more money at it and let the chaos continue.

But ultimately, this is not sustainable. There is no real strategy, the Saudis have got…. And ultimately, just like the Israelis lost in Gaza and in Lebanon, these Saudi have already lost in Yemen. They cannot achieve anything and death of the Saudi cancer is Inshallah [God willing] imminent because there is a lot of infighting within the Saudi family at the moment anyway. If you keep an eye on what is going on, you will see that [these] many mini-Sheikhs are like busy bickering with each other over their little kingdom and ultimately these people are going to end up killing each other. And I mean there is even talk of a coup against [king] Salman which probably is not a bad thing given the fact that this is someone who has dementia, who does not remember what he did five seconds ago, just probably why he continues to bomb Yemen the way he does; he does not remember he did it yesterday. 

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