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US support for Saudi war in Yemen has become political liability: Analyst

Keith Preston

The administration of US President Donald Trump is likely to reduce support for Saudi Arabia’s deadly military aggression in Yemen due to the political disadvantages for the US, both domestically and globally, says an American political analyst in Virginia.

“It appears that the Trump administration is trying to rein in the Saudi aggression in Yemen somewhat because it has become an international political liability; it has also become a domestic political liability” said Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com.

The shift in policy is also partly due to Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, Preston told Press TV on Friday.

“Plus, there’s the fact that the destabilization of Saudi Arabia threatens a lot of American holdings in that particular region, I think that an important motivating factor as well,” he added.

A group of Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the US Congress are making a new effort to end Saudi Arabia’s deadly war against the people of Yemen, amid international outrage over the Saudi regime’s bombing of a Yemeni prison that killed over 100 people.

The lawmakers are seeking to protect an amendment to the annual US defense policy bill, which prohibits the Pentagon from providing the spare parts that Saudi Arabia needs to keep its warplanes, which are mostly US-made, in operational status.

The measure also ends certain forms of intelligence-sharing between Washington and Riyadh.

Trump has pledged to veto any bills that seek to undermine ties with Saudi Arabia as he did one earlier this year which banned a massive $8 billion arms sale to the kingdom.

Trump and his team have time and again touted Saudi Arabia as an important regional partner, which plays a vital role in keeping Israel secure while being considered a counterweight to Iran.

However, the war on Yemen, which has killed tens of thousands of people and caused near-famine conditions in the impoverished country, is drawing international attention.

A United Nations report released Tuesday said the US, UK and France may be complicit in war crimes in Yemen by arming and providing intelligence and logistics support to the Saudi-led coalition that starves civilians as a war tactic.

The report by a UN panel of experts accused the military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates of killing Yemeni civilians in air raids and deliberately denying them food in a country facing famine.


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