Obama trying to placate Saudis by smart bombs: Maloof

Press TV has conducted an interview with Michael Maloof, former Pentagon official, to discuss a recent US approval of $1.29 billion sale of smart bombs to Saudi Arabia.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Are you at all surprised that this deal is going through specifically considering Saudi Arabia is in the middle of bombarding Yemen which is resulting in civilian casualties?

Maloof: No, I am not surprised, but at the same time it is still shocking because those smart bombs clearly are going to be used in Yemen and they are not going to be used certainly in the anti-ISIS coalition that is run by the United States against ISIS in Syria.

But once again this demonstrates that the Obama administration is trying to placate the Saudis and trying to keep them in alliance. The Saudis basically have the Obama administration over barrel, they can almost get anything they want at this point and how they use them is something else now. The only redeeming possibility is that Congress turns it down; they have thirty days to turn that export down. But I think that because the United States views Saudi Arabia as vital to the coalition, they do not want to do anything that is going to upset them.

And we have seen this in other areas. For example, I spoke to a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee the other day and he said that the XL pipeline which Obama turned down after seven years …was really also to placate the Saudis who have been begging the United States to cut back on its energy independence efforts.

So I think the United States is doing all that it can, particularly the Obama administration, to placate the Saudis at a very difficult time and the Obama administration probably feels it has no other choice.

Press TV: How long until the US starts realizing that this alliance is going to come too costly?

Maloof: Well, I think they are already realizing it, but at the same time it is not so much the alliance as the amounts of money that pour into the defense purchases by the Saudis. And how they use those weapons? We can say on paper please do not use them for this and that, but they are going to ignore it as before and it is just going to wreak more havoc. Unfortunately, we have an administration that is trying to placate the Saudis and they basically can call the shots unless Congress acts and I just do not see that happening.

Press TV: If profits and national interests are what trump human rights, then what is the difference between the Saudi monarchy and the Pentagon?

Maloof: Well, it is not much because the major connection between the Saudis and us today is not so much the oil as it is the defense spending and the defense purchases that the Saudi are making.

And you notice also that the Defense Department sent that request own up to the Congress on Friday night when no one is watching, no one is looking and the Congress just, with given all the other activities that it has and it preoccupation with the ISIS right now and also the potential threat of an ISIS attack on the Washington, DC, there is not going to be that much effort to rise up and object to this sale unfortunately and as a consequence the Saudis will get want they want at the same time that they continue to help finance ISIS and the other Jihadists in Syria and throughout the entire region.

Press TV: Is not militarizing the Middle East, a volatile region as it stands right now, going to make things even worse? Has not the US calculated that blowback?

Maloof: You are absolutely right that this is a very difficult time in which to be flooding the area with more weapons. But at the same time if the Saudis wanted it, the Obama administration is going to give it to them because they feel in their minds that the Saudis are integral to the US anti-ISIS coalition. And also they probably feel that they need ISIS in other areas now.

The administration will pay lip service to ask the Saudis not to bomb the Yemenis, but the Saudis have already demonstrated that they are undertaken their own independent foreign policy no matter what and as long as the dollars flow in to the defense establishment here to purchase those weapons, we are taking billions, they will continue to flow it to the Saudis.

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