West overlooking Saudi crimes in Yemen: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with John Wight, a journalist and political commentator from Edinburgh, to discuss the fight against terrorism.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Walk us through the comments made by Iran’s vice minister of foreign affairs highlighting the fact that collective effort is needed to tackle terrorism in the region and the entire world as well.

Wight: He is completely correct in his formulation and in his statement, but unfortunately the reality is rather different on the ground because what we see are rogue states in the Middle East, I am speaking here particularly of Israel and Saudi Arabia which are both underpinned by religious sectarianism and are both close allies of the West. Both states speak the language of anti-terrorism but in fact … practice … terrorism whether it is in the case of Israel against the subjugated Palestinian people who are engaged in a long-lasting struggle for their legitimate rights, and the Saudis who use proxies which we see the consequences of which in Syria and in Iraq.

So until there is a recognition of the instability in the region and the causes and we remove the ideological blinkers in a geopolitical agendas at work here, then it is very difficult to see any concrete progress being made when it comes to tackling terrorism. Of course there does need to be international cooperation. Countries such as Iran and Russia have been calling for such cooperation for quite a few number of years now because international terrorism is proliferated rather than lessened in the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, which Washington presented as a seminal moment in the struggle against terrorism. If anything terrorism has increased, we have to look at its ideological foundations; we will have to look at the sectarian nature and in this regard we are centered on Riyadh, we cannot avoid its ideological … which is Wahhabism, which is a distortion of Sunni Islam, which has managed to summate huge influence over Sunni Islam both in the region and throughout the Islamic Ummah in the world.

Press TV: The Iranian vice FM Morteza Sarmadi also said that the best way to settle differences among nations is in fact diplomacy, could be alluding to not only Syria but also to Yemen which has continuously been suffering from the Saudi bombardments on its civilian infrastructure. Talk to us more about that as well.

Wight: It is interesting that the conflict in Yemen has hardly registered a blip on the radar of Western media where all focus is on Syria. In Yemen we see a very unholy alliance between the West and Saudi Arabia who at best, the West is at best turning a blind eye to the Saudi air campaign against Yemeni civilians who are fighting for their rights against the sectarian government there and aided in this regard by Western weaponry. The Saudis are the West’s best customer for Western arms and it is a very lucrative trade and until this nexus of unholy alliance is broken, then this will continue. This idea that there is one law for one country and one law for another which one country has been guaranteed an exceptional status its violence is supported or at least is ignored, whereas the violence of other countries defending themselves against terrorism is treated as criminal and these countries are subjected to sanctions and are threatened with military intervention. … double standards, this hypocrisy that lies at the root of the instability in the region and until equal rights and equal status are accorded to people fighting in Yemen, as people fighting in Syria and Iraq, then we have never returned to anything close to or approximating to stability and security. The international law must be applied universally, cannot be applied here and not applied there. This exceptionalism must end as a matter of urgency I will suggest.

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