Escalation of Saudi attacks against Yemen on the eve of peace talks

By Fatemeh Salehi

TEHRAN - Yemen peace talk is to start in Sweden this week between the warring sides with the presence of the Ansarollah delegation. There is a great deal of speculation over the success of the talks as a result of the Saudi-backed coalition’s hindrances and the U.S. political and military interests in the continuation of the Yemeni war. 

The talks will focus on agreements on exchange of captives, and reopening of Sana’a International Airport in order to halt the war and eventually running an election.

Mohammad Ali al-Houthi, head of Yemen revolution former President of the Revolutionary Committee or Revolutionary Council has recently said that the repetition of Saudi-led collation’s terms and conditions for negotiations is an attempt to avert the UN-led peace talks.

Al-Houthi believes the UN envoy in Yemen, after the failure of previous talks, has reached the conclusion that any conditions set by the Saudis and its allies were an impediment to the talks.

Previous talks planned for September in Geneva failed to get underway because the Saudi-led coalition prevented the Houthi delegation to participate.

According to an informed source, UN envoy to Yemen Martin Griffiths is expected to travel to Yemen, Sana’a in an effort to preempt another premature collapse of talks.

Iran has supported the UN-led peace talks in Sweden and called on all Yemeni parties to engage in constructive negotiations and take confidence-building steps to pave the ground for reaching a comprehensive agreement to end the pain of the Yemeni people.

Escalation of Saudi-led coalition attacks in Yemen on the eve of the Stockholm talks

While the humanitarian situation in Yemenis worsening by day and the UN issues warnings against the deteriorating conditions in Yemen and calls for the lift of blockade of Yemen, the Saudi officials are seeking to create impediment for course of talks.

However, the Saudi-led coalition continues to carry out their brutal attacks against residential areas in Yemen, with 14 dead and wounded during just one attack on a house in Al Hudaydah.

The Saudi-led coalition has intensified the blockade of the strategic port of Al Hudaydah, the serves as the only entry point for Yemen’s humanitarian aid. Riyadh is making every effort to create obstacles on the way of the Stockholm talks to serve the U.S. political and military objectives which calls for the continuation of the Yemeni War which broke out with the U.S. approval in the first place.

Under the pretest of military aggression against Yemen, the U.S. signed significant arms contracts with Riyadh and gained financial rewards.  

On the verge of the Yemen peace talks, not only the Saudi attacks haven’t let up but have gained momentum in provinces of al-Bayda and Dhale and on common borders with Saudi Arabia and the West Bank.

Since November, the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen has carried out over 100 air strikes against the residential areas in Al Hudaydah and the attacks have intensified in recent days, particularly in the border areas and regions close to Sana’a.

Although the U.S. and Western countries seem to have raised criticism of Saudi Arabia over Yemen, in practice, they don’t take any concrete steps to lift the siege and cancel their arms contracts or boycott Riyadh.

Crown prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bin Salman considers the war in Yemen a proxy war between Iran and his country, although Riyadh has failed to achieve much in the past four years of battle against Yemen.

Although Yemen’s Ansarollah has repeatedly expressed willingness to stop their attacks against the aggressors and initiate talks, the Saudi-led coalition took no steps for peace talks.

As it appears now, the Stockholm peace talks on Yemen won’t reach a desirable objective. Although some analysts argue otherwise and believe following Jamal Khashoggi’s case, the Saudis are more apt to agree to stop the war to get out of the world criticism.  

US, Britain Push Yemen Ceasefire as Tactic to Defeat Houthis

FINIAN CUNNINGHAM 

At first glance, it may seem like a positive move. The Trump administration and London are both putting pressure on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to implement a ceasefire in Yemen’s atrocious war. Washington and London are also calling for warring sides to enter into peace negotiations within a month.

What’s wrong with that, you may ask? Well, as Houthi rebels who took over Yemen at the end of 2014 are saying, the country has been under aggression for the past three years from a Saudi-led coalition supported militarily by the US, Britain and France. The unrelenting war on the poorest country in the Middle East has led to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in decades, with over half of the population – some 14 million people – at risk of starvation, according to the UN.

Therefore, the appropriate legal and moral course of action now is not merely a ceasefire or talks. It is for the Western-backed Saudi, Emirati coalition to immediately halt its criminal aggression against Yemen. In short, stop the foreign interference in Yemen’s sovereign affairs.

US Secretary of State James Mattis and Britain’s Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt appear to be impelled by humanitarian concern for the massive human suffering in Yemen with their recent calls for cessation of hostilities.

But a more nuanced reading of their exhortations suggest that the real concern is to burnish the blood-soaked image of the Saudi coalition that their governments support, and, secondly, to inveigle the Houthis into a negotiations framework that will result in undue foreign influence over Yemen’s politics.

Last week, Washington announced that it was suspending mid-air refueling flights for Saudi and Emirati warplanes that have been pounding Yemen since March 2015, which has resulted in a horrendous death toll among civilians. The indiscriminate killing of the Saudis and Emirati air strikes has been amply documented, albeit downplayed by Western media. The latter keep repeating a figure of 10,000 dead in Yemen – a figure which has bizarrely remained unchanged for at least the past two years. The real death toll from air strikes is unknown but likely to be near 50,000.

American, British and French military support for the murderous operations in Yemen should have stopped months, even years ago, if official humanitarian concerns were genuine.

The question is: why the sudden effort by Washington and London, as well as Paris, to call for a ceasefire and follow-on political talks?

One factor, no doubt, is the barbaric murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi by assassins linked to the House of Saud. Turkish authorities believe that Khashoggi was brutally murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, his body hacked to pieces and dissolved in industrial-strength acid. Audiotapes obtained by the Turkish authorities have implicated the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the murder plot against the dissident journalist.

The gruesome details of Khashoggi’s killing and the blatant lies that the Saudi rulers have issued to cover up their barbarity have heaped immense pressure on Washington, London and Paris over their close ties with the House of Saud. Public outrage has demanded that sanctions be imposed on Riyadh, such as cancelling multi-billion-dollar arms deals.

It seems significant that the acute disgrace over the appalling Khashoggi affair and the association of the US, British and French governments with such a despotic Saudi regime has in turn prompted these Western powers to mount a damage-limitation exercise in public relations.

This is where the Yemen war provides an opportunity for the Western powers and their Saudi clients to salvage their tarnished public image.

By pushing for a ceasefire in Yemen, Washington, London and Paris can claim to be “getting tough” with the Saudis for the sake of alleviating “humanitarian suffering”. By appearing to respond to the Western calls for a ceasefire, the Saudis can then also claim they are relenting out of humane concern.

However, such pleas have not stopped Saudi and Emirati-backed militia on the ground besieging the Yemeni port city of Hodeida on the Red Sea, for which 80-90 per cent of the entire population in the country rely on for food and other vital supplies. In other words, the Western-backed Saudi coalition is using starvation tactics to bring the Houthi rebels and the wider Yemeni population to their knees. That is a monstrous war crime.

What Mattis is calling for in terms of ceasefire is for all heavy weapons in Yemen to be put under the control of United Nations peacekeepers. Washington is also demanding that the Houthis rebels withdraw from the country’s border with Saudi Arabia, from where the rebels have mounted missile attacks which have gravely harassed the Saudis, including in the capital Riyadh. The Houthis have struck Saudi territory in response to the air strikes.

So, what the Americans, British and French are striving for is, firstly, a respite from the sordid publicity over the Khashoggi killing. If the “humanitarian appeal” over Yemen succeeds to placate Western public outrage, then these governments will be able to continue business-as-usual selling the Saudi regime lucrative weapons contracts.

Secondly, by drawing the Houthi rebels into “peace negotiations” that will also burnish the Western and Saudi public image, as well as – equally importantly – forcing the rebels into accepting a compromise on their revolutionary government. By entering negotiations with the Saudi-backed remnants of the exiled Yemeni leader Mansour Hadi, the Houthis will inevitably have to accept making concessions and allowing an accommodation with the ousted, discredited regime.

Mansour Hadi, who has been living in exile in Saudi Arabia since the Houthis seized power, was reviled by most Yemenis for his corruption and being a puppet of the Saudis and Americans. His exiled clique is routinely and mendaciously referred to by Western media as the “internationally recognized government of Yemen”.

When he fled the country in ignominy in early 2015, the Houthi rebels had succeeded in spearheading a popular revolt. The rebels profess a branch of Shia Islam, but there was every indication that they had a relatively democratic program for pluralist governance.

The Saudi and American sponsors of the ousted Mansour Hadi reacted to the overthrow of their puppet by launching an air war on Yemen in late March 2015 – a war which has continued unremittingly ever since, with Britain and France also joining the profitable slaughter by suppling warplanes and missiles.

Another lie told by Western media is that the rebels are proxies of Iran, a lie which is used to “justify” the Western-backed criminal war against the country. Iran supports the Houthis diplomatically, but there is no evidence of arms supplies. Even if there was, so what? That wouldn’t justify aerial bombardment of the country and its people.

The devastation inflicted on Yemen and its people has largely been ignored by Western news media. Despite the lack of coverage, the Western public have nevertheless become aware of the horror and their governments’ complicity. Harrowing images of skeletal children dying from starvation and lack of basic medicines have shamed Washington, London and Paris into taking some action, however despicably inadequate and long overdue.

The recent impetus for a ceasefire and talks in Yemen coming from the US and its Western allies is not due to humanitarianism. It’s a cynical PR exercise to whitewash bloodied images – both theirs and that of their Saudi client regime. The Yemen war has been shown to be a sickening charnel house in a futile bid for Western regime change against the Houthi revolution. By forcing the Houthis into negotiations, the Western powers hope to achieve their regime change objective by another tactic – and gain PR capital at the same time.

If Washington, London and Paris were really serious about ending the suffering in Yemen, they would simply demand that the aggression stops immediately, so that the Yemenis are allowed to determine their own political future without foreign interference. But the Western powers will not do that because their interference in Yemen, along with the Saudis, is the very reason why this criminal war of aggression started and grinds on.

FINIAN CUNNINGHAM

Former editor and writer for major news media organizations. He has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages

Armed Struggle Only Solution to End Palestinian Plight

The plight of the Palestinians knows no end. Not a day passes when they are not targeted by the usurpers of their homeland, whether in besieged Gaza, whether in the West Bank, or whether in the occupied Islamic holy city of Bayt al-Moqaddas.

They are killed like sitting ducks by the Zionist soldiers or the Jewish settlers streaming in illegally from various parts of the world to seize the lands of the Palestinians and to practice their skills with newly acquired rifles by taking potshots at the helpless men, women, and children. 

And if the Palestinians dare to defend themselves, they are branded ‘terrorists’ and denounced as ‘heartless brutes’, with the western media joining the Zionists to highlight ‘violent crimes’ against the ‘peaceful’ and ‘peace-loving’ Israelis. 

The UN, especially its Security Council, looks the other way, while the regimes ruling the Arab states have no interest, other than lip service, for the chronic question of Palestine.
This indifference has emboldened the Zionists to trespass with impunity on the sacred sites of Islam in the usurped land, as was evident the other day when soldiers and the so-called settlers joined together to desecrate the holy precincts of al-Aqsa Mosque.

Day before yesterday, Palestinian worshippers gathering for the weekly Friday congregational prayer at Islam’s third holiest site were barred by the Zionist soldiers, who closed the gates and fired teargas shells and live ammunition at the helpless protestors, accusing them of pelting stones and throwing combustibles.

It is obvious that no true Muslim will resort to such violence at a holy site and if there were such incidents as claimed by the Zionists then this should be the dirty work of the illegal Jewish settlers clamouring for destruction of the sacred Islamic precincts and the building of a temple in its place.

Not an eyebrow was raised by Arab reactionary regimes at the latest sacrilege in Occupied Bayt al-Moqaddas, or the unabated killing of peaceful protestors in Gaza by the Zionists, while the Saudis and Emiratis continued to shed Muslim blood in Yemen while labelling all sorts of wild accusations against the Islamic Republic of Iran for its defence of the oppressed and the downtrodden.

It is time for the Palestinians to realize that mere protests in Bayt al-Moqaddas, stone-throwing at the heavily armed Zionists in the West Bank, and combustible kites coupled with a few crude rockets fired at the occupiers of their homelands from Gaza, although commendable acts, are not enough to scare their enemies, let alone drive them away from the usurped land of Palestine.

They should take a leaf from the uncompromising spirit and innovative methods of Lebanon’s legendry anti-terrorist movement, the Hezbollah, or the indomitable heroism of Yemen’s popular Ansarallah Movement against invaders possessing state-of-the-art military technology.

In other words, only a well-organized armed struggle with asymmetric forms of modern warfare, including guided missiles and remote-controlled radar-evading drones, is the only solution to redress their plight that requires further sacrifices in view of the savage racist and terroristic nature of Israel, which eventually will be.

This technology, in addition to being available on the international market, can be assembled through accessible data on the websites, and there is no shortage of helping hands. All it needs is ingenuity by the Palestinians, as the Yemenis have shown with complete trust in Divine Assistance and full confidence in their own abilities.

It is certainly no crime nor terrorism for an oppressed, occupied and usurped people, to acquire whatever forms of defence equipment that is possible to procure through any means in order to protect their life, their dignity, their land, their families, their faith and their heritage.
The important point, however, is to be on guard against pressures, threats, and deception of both the implacable foes like the US, Britain, and France; and those feigning to be friends such as the UN, the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Qataris, the Kuwaitis, and the Egyptians.

In other words, unless the Palestinians resist and refuse with firm conviction any of those much-tried useless methods of talks, negotiations, and mediation that have yielded no results over the past seven decades, their situation will never change, let alone their steady slide into not just second or third class citizens, but slaves of the Zionists in their own ancestral land. 

Fortune favours the brave, and any laxity will be a costly lapse that might delay the march of the forces gathering in the vicinity of Palestine in scores of thousands for liberation of Islam’s former qibla.

-Kayhan Int’l 

No Liberal Rallies Yet for the Children of Yemen

By PAUL STREET

Hundreds of thousands of people showed up across the United States at more than 600 gatherings three weeks ago. They came out to protest Donald Trump‘s “zero tolerance” immigration policy in highly choreographed, Democratic Party-affiliated “Families Belong Together” rallies and marches. Liberal celebrities marched and spoke. Local, state, and federal Democratic Party politicians and office-holders gave passionate speeches denouncing Trump’s separation of Central American migrant children from their parents at the southern U.S. border.

Marchers carried signs expressing their concern for children and families. Here are some of the messages written on the posters displayed at these gatherings:

“We care”

“I Raise my Voice Not so I can Shout but So that Those Without a Voice Can be Heard”

“Do All Lives Still Matter?”

“What Would Mr. Rogers Say?”

“Compassion”

(The issue that sparked this remarkable outpouring has already been pushed off the front pages and the cable news headlines by the resurgent RussiaGate story, brought to new intensity by Trump’s “spectacular debacle” alongside Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland. It is a victim of the all-powerful “now we see you, now we don’t” U.S. news cycle – this even as nearly two-thirds of the migrant children criminally separated have yet to be reunited with their parents and as evidence emerges that the Trump administration intended for the family separations to be permanent.)

“Emaciated Babies”: 50,000 Yemeni Children May Have Died in 2017

We have yet to learn of any large and widespread U.S. demonstrations on behalf of the children and families of Yemen, where the U.S. is deeply complicit in the creation of a situation that “looks,” in the words of the United Nations’ humanitarian chief, “like the Apocalypse.” UNICEF reported last year that a child dies from preventable causes on the average of once every 10 minutes in Yemen.

As the Associated Press (AP) reported last May, roughly 3 million Yemeni women and children are “acutely malnourished; another 400,000 children are fighting for their lives.” Further:

“Nearly a third of Yemen’s population — 8.4 million of its 29 million people — rely completely on food aid or else they would starve. That number grew by a quarter over the past year…Aid agencies warn that parts of Yemen could soon start to see widespread death from famine. More and more people are reliant on aid that is already failing to reach people. …It is unknown how many have died, since authorities are not able to track cases. Save the Children late last year estimated that 50,000 children may have died in 2017 of extreme hunger or disease (emphasis added), given that up to 30 percent of children with untreated cases of severe acute malnutrition die.”

The AP told the heartbreaking story of Umm Mizrah and her children, tragic drops in the bucket of what could become one of the biggest humanitarian catastrophes of the last half-century:

“The young mother stepped onto the scale for the doctor. Even with all her black robes on, she weighed only 84 pounds …The doctor’s office is covered with dozens of pictures of emaciated babies who have come through Al-Sadaqa Hospital in Aden …Mothers like Umm Mizrah…skip meals, sleep to escape the gnawing in their stomachs. They hide bony faces and emaciated bodies in voluminous black abaya robes and veils…The doctor asked the mother to get back on the scale holding her son, Mizrah. At 17 months, he was 5.8 kilograms (12.8 pounds) — around half the normal weight for his age. He showed all the signs of ‘severe acute malnutrition,’ the most dire stage of hunger. His legs and feet were swollen, he wasn’t getting enough protein. When the doctor pressed a finger into the skin of his feet, the indentation lingered.”

Things have gotten worse in the last two and half months. According to Lisa Grande, head of the UN humanitarian effort in Yemen, “8.5 million people that we describe as being pre-famine… when they wake up in the morning, they have no idea if they will eat that day…by the end of this year, another 10 million Yemenis will be in that situation.”

Two and a half weeks ago, special PBS correspondent Jane Ferguson related the plight of Maimona Shaghadar, who “suffers the agony of starvation in silence. No longer able to walk or talk, at 11 years old, little Maimona’s emaciated body weighs just 24 pounds…Every day,” a nurse told Ferguson in a remote Yemen hospital, medical personnel “see these sorts of cases.”

Cholera, a prominent 19th-century disease, has become epidemic there, thanks to the collapse of water sanitation. Cholera has already killed thousands of Yemeni civilians, children especially, and a million Yemenis are currently infected. Yemen is now home to what Ferguson calls “the worst cholera outbreak in modern history. Now every time the rains comes, people fall ill.”

“American Made”

The cause? In “mainstream” U.S. media, the Yemeni children and families suffering this near “apocalypse” are victims of a three-year-old war between Yemen’s Iran-backed Shiite Houthi rebels who hold the country’s north, and a Saudi Arabian-led coalition, armed and backed by the United States. But there is little evidence of significant Iranian involvement in Yemen. The desperately poor nation’s “civil war” is a remarkably one-sided affair in which the world’s only Superpower (the United States) has been providing critical support for what amounts to the crucifixion of millions of innocent children and families. Combined with a vicious economic blockade, the US-Saudi coalition’s relentless bombing campaign has collapsed Yemen’s economy, leaving two-thirds of the population to depend outside on food aid for survival. The air onslaughts have devastated much of Yemen’s basic infrastructure so that more than half the population lacks access to safe drinking water – the key cause of the cholera epidemic. In a recent trip deep into Yemen’s countryside, Ferguson found a Doctors Without Borders cholera treatment center that had been crushed into rubble by a U.S.-Saudi airstrike the day before – an obvious war crime. “It was just about to open its doors to patients,” Ferguson reports.

Ferguson spoke to Dr. Ali Al Motaa, a Yemeni college professor who did his doctorate in the US. “The missiles that kill us,” Motaa said, “American-made. The planes that kill us, American-made. The tanks, Abrams, American-made. You are saying to me, where is America? America is the whole thing.”

By Ferguson’s account, from deep inside rebel-controlled territory:

“The aerial bombing campaign has not managed to dislodge the rebels, but has hit weddings, hospitals and homes. The U.S. military supports the Saudi coalition with logistics and intelligence. The United States it also sells the Saudis and coalition partners many of the bombs they drop on Yemen. In the mountains outside the capital, we gained exclusive access to the site where the Houthis store unexploded American-made bombs, like this 2000-pound Mark 84 bomb made in Garland, Texas. It landed in the middle of the street in the capital, we are told.”

That was before he U.S.-Saudi forces, with the Trump administration’s approval, decided to launch an offensive against the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, through which almost all the food and medicine coming into Houthi-held Yemen passes. As Al Jazeera reported three days ago, the UN is warning that “the humanitarian crisis in Yemen is worsening as tens of thousands of families are displaced by the Saudi-UAE coalition offensive to retake the strategic port city….the relentless air raids and lack of aid are making an already dire humanitarian crisis even worse for the civilians who live in the region….tens of thousands of families have been displaced from Hodeidah as a result of the fierce fighting.

The U.S. is involved in direct as well as indirect assault on Yemen. Yemen was home to the first known U.S. drone attack outside Afghanistan in 2002. Hundreds of U.S. drone and other airstrikes have targeted Yemen since 2009.

Trump drew his first military blood in Yemen. U.S. Navy special forces carried out a raid—planned by the Obama administration and handed off to the incoming Trump team—that killed 25 civilians, including 10 children in the mountainous Yakla region of Yemen’s Al Bayda province. One of the children killed was an 8-year-old girl, Nawar al-Awlaki, daughter of the Islamist preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed on Barack Obama’s orders in a September 2011 U.S. drone strike in Yemen. Nawar’s older brother, 16-year-old Abdulrahman, was killed in a second Obama-commanded drone strike soon afterward.

Trump’s continuation of the U.S. slaughter of al-Awlaki’s children was consistent with his campaign claim that he would kill the relatives of terrorist suspects—a war crime. “The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families; when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families,” Trump pronounced on Fox News in December 2015.

A PBS NewsHour report earlier this month describes the Yemen tragedy as a “man-made” catastrophe. A more historically specific characterization would be “Empire-made” or “Washington-made.” As Bill Van Auken accurately reported on the World Socialist Web Site five weeks ago:

“This total war against an entire population…would be impossible without the uninterrupted support—military and political—of US imperialism since its outset…The US, together with its main NATO allies the UK and France, has supplied the planes, warships, bombs, missiles and shells used to devastate Yemen and slaughter its people. In his eight years in office, President Barack Obama presided over some $115 billion in arms sales to the monarchical dictatorship in Riyadh. The Trump administration, which has sought to forge an anti-Iran axis with Saudi Arabia, the other reactionary Gulf oil sheikhdoms and Israel, has touted arms deals with Riyadh that potentially would amount to $110 billion.”

“The Pentagon has given direct and indispensable aid to the Saudi-led onslaught, providing midair refueling for the planes that bomb Yemeni civilians, staffing a joint command center in Riyadh with US intelligence and logistics officers and reinforcing the Saudi-UAE blockade of the country with American warships. Recently, US Green Berets have been deployed with Saudi ground forces to assist in their anti-Yemen operations. Under the banner of the ‘war on terror,’ the Pentagon is waging its own air war in Yemen, conducting at least 130 air and drone strikes in 2017, quadruple the number in 2016…The Trump administration gave the go-ahead for the current siege of Hodeidah Pentagon officials have reported that US officers are helping to select targets in the port city.”

Historical Continuities

The Trump administration’s funding and equipping of the savage war on Yemen shares three key characteristics with the “zero tolerance” immigration policy that Trump was recently forced to (partially and haltingly) rescind. First, it unconscionably uses innocent children and families as hostages and pawns in the advance of White House policy goals.

Second, it is richly consistent with U.S. policy stretching far back in history (see this on the long U.S. record of family separation and thison the long U.S. history of directly and indirectly attacking and killing children and other civilians in foreign nations).

Third, it is consistent with Barack Obama’s record. The Obama administration backed the Saudi-led Arab assault on Yemen. It also (as few marching against Trump’s border policy seem to know or care) responded to Central American migration and asylum-seeking with a policy of aggressive deterrence and detention – a policy that included the caging of children.

Why No Mass Marches for Yemeni Children?

Clearly the murder of tens of thousands of (Yemeni) children is a bigger crime than the undoubted transgression of traumatically if (hopefully temporarily) separating 2300 Central American children form their migrant parents. Why don’t hundreds of thousands of U.S.-Americans march on behalf of Yemeni children and families killed, maimed, starved, sickened, and otherwise placed at grave risk by Washington and its Arab allies?

Differences of geographical proximity and familiarity are part of the explanation. Equally if not more significant: the dominant U.S media’s systematic under-reporting of U.S, imperial aggression in the Middle East; that media’s portrayal of is the Yemen war as a regional Sunni-Shia and Saudi-Iranian conflict in which the U.S. is only peripherally involved; the Yemeni victims’ status as Muslim Others who are linked in the dominant U.S. media and politics culture with the officially U.S,- and Israel-demonized state of Iran (a nation that all too unmentionably looks like a model of democracy, social justice, and women’s rights in comparison to its regional arch-enemy and Washington’s “good friend” the absolutist and arch-reactionary state of Saudi Arabia). For these and other reasons, the Democratic Party establishment sees no political advantage in confronting Trump on U.S. Yemen policy, a policy in which both reigning U.S. political parties are deeply complicit.

Trump’s Trumping in Helsinki Bolsters Iran’s Indomitable Stance

As we had forecast in our Viewpoint Column of Monday, July 16, US president, Donald Trump, was not just outwitted by his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, at the summit in Helsinki on Tuesday, July 16, but so thoroughly trumped that the whole US, including his Republican party, is calling him a "disgrace for the nation”, if not a "traitor”. We had said day-before-yesterday in our column titled "Trump’s Diplomatic Misdemeanor Set to Boomerang Badly”, following his fiasco in Belgium and Britain: "Thus, shunned by all and liked by no one, Trump now heads to Helsinki, the capital of Finland, for a summit with President Vladimir of Russia, a master politician, who will certainly hold his ground on Crimea and Ukraine, without yielding to any outlandish demands regarding Syria, where the illegal American military presence has no chance of survival.” Even with his supporters trying to distance themselves from him now, we are not sure what sort of trumping Trump will receive at the hands of the Congress or whether he will be impeached as the most idiotic president in US history who meekly surrendered to arch rival Russia. Whatever the outcome, judging from his sickening rhetoric against Iran during the press conference in Helsinki that made no impression upon Putin, the Don Quixote in the White House is expected to continue the suicidal course he has chosen. Trump, who was outsmarted last June in Singapore by North Korean Leader, Kim Jong-un, is incapable of understanding that the Islamic Republic of Iran is too resilient a popular system of government to succumb to his economic sanctions or military threats. He is free to rave and rant to his heart’s content while he is still at the helm of affairs in Washington, but he can neither legitimize the existence of the illegal Zionist entity nor force Iran to withdraw its advisors from Syria, or for that matter stop Tehran’s principled support for Iraq’s Hashd ash-Sha’bi, Palestine’s freedom fighters, the popular Ansarallah movement of Yemen, Bahrain’s long suppressed majority, Afghanistan’s oppressed people, and Lebanon’s legendry anti-terrorist organization, the Hezbollah – let alone end the Islamic Republic’s peaceful nuclear project, aerospace programme, and rapidly expanding missile defense technology. We, however, expect some real soul-searching at the decision-making centres in the US, in the wake of Trump’s dismal performance vis-à-vis Putin in Helsinki where the thug in him appeared like a kitten, coupled with his belittling of the FBI and other American intelligence agencies, whose heads are now furious at his stupidity.

It should be clear to most Americans now that a madman who undermines the credibility of the nation by breaching international accords, bragging about military weapons, selecting hoodlums and conmen as administration officials, disturbing the world trade order, betting upon losing horses in West Asia such as the rootless, repressive, unrepresentative reactionary Arab regimes, and calling traditional allies like the EU, "foes”, will bring further disaster to the US, if his powers are not slashed. As for Europe, it is about time it realized that the US and its hegemonic heads do not belong to the Old World, of which Russia, Iran and the other Asian and African countries are integral parts, which warrants peace, harmony, co-existence and uninterrupted economic and trade ties without bowing to trans-Atlantic pressures. As the wily Putin threw to a surprised Trump the football he had brought to Finland, fresh from hosting the FIFA World Cup, the ball is now in the US court – as its president sheepishly acknowledged, without the least clue on fair play and sporting spirit. The Islamic Republic is grateful to God Almighty that its foe is a fool – as we recite in one of the supplications in Sahifa-e Sajjadiyyah of Imam Zain al-Abedin (AS), the 4th Infallible Heir of the Almighty Last and Greatest Messenger to all mankind, Prophet Muhammad (SAWA). -Kayhan Int’l

Yemen War: Trial Time for Saudi Arabia?

Saudi Arabia is fast approaching trial time on its illegal war on Yemen, as the international humanitarian community will soon have to respond against them. This includes the United Nations and the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

While the United Nations and the international civil society insist they want a peaceful resolution to the worst humanitarian crisis in the 21st century, Riyadh dismisses the idea of diplomacy in the assessment, saying they wouldn’t be willing to bargain away their stated goal, which is regime change in Sana’a.

However, since many people are dying and the country is facing famine, there is no time in which the Saudis and their allies can threaten Yemen any further. Simply put, Yemen is dying and time is almost here. There is an increasing rate of civilian casualties. According to the UN aid agencies, the upsurge in fighting is of particular concern. Civilians are under fire, as Saudi-led forces carry out airstrikes and indiscriminate bombing, without taking care to spare the civilian population, much less respecting the principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution.

This is while any intentional, direct attack against civilians or civilian objects is considered a serious violation of International Humanitarian Law and the UN Charter. The warmongers refuse to take any feasible precautions to avoid, or in any event, minimise, the impact of violence on civilians. And that’s when it’s safe to conclude that the UN and the International Criminal Court in the Hague will have to step in to stop the protracted conflict and hold to account those who want this crisis to continue apace – one way or another:

– It is true that in the wake of unlawful US-backed, Saudi-led bombing, some Western governments have decided to suspend the sale of weapons worth tens of billions of dollars to Saudi Arabia. It is a recognition, a long time in coming, that the Saudi-led coalition’s military campaign in Yemen have devastated the country, killed thousands of civilians and brought it to the brink of famine. However, unlawful airstrikes still continue, which means the decision by some Western governments to suspend arms sales has sent no message to the Saudis. US President Donald Trump, in his first trip to Riyadh for instance, sent an alternative, deeply troublesome message. He sold American weapons to the Saudis worth $110 billion – nearly as much as President Obama authorized during his eight years in office.

– The deals include Raytheon bombs, Lockheed Martin missile defense systems and BAE combat vehicles, and some of the weapons whose sales had been suspended. Thanks to these weapons, the scars of unlawful airstrikes can be found across Yemen, where the Saudi-led coalition has carried out scores of attacks that hit homes, schools, markets, and hospitals since March 2015, when it began its military campaign against the Ansarullah resistance movement and forces loyal to the former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

– Human Rights Watch has documented numerous unlawful coalition attacks over the last three years, many war crimes. In many of these cases, including the attacks on funeral halls and markets, the organization’s investigators were able to identify the US weapons that were used. These are the very same weapons that continue to drive Yemen, already the poorest nation in the Middle East, toward humanitarian catastrophe.

– Both the Saudi-led coalition and their American allies have blocked or restricted critical relief supplies from reaching civilians. Seven million people face starvation and cholera ravages parts of the country. The UN should be urging the Saudis to shift course by abiding by the laws of war and holding those responsible for past abuses to account.

– Without Washington’s much-needed support and consent this war can never continue. By going to Riyadh to sell the Saudis weapons worth over $110 billion, President Donald Trump effectively told them to continue as before and not to worry about any international backlash at the UN – the flow of US weapons would not stop. This makes the US government complicit in Saudi war crimes. Continued US arms sales to a country that has repeatedly violated the laws of war expose US officials to legal liability for aiding and abetting Saudi war crimes.

It is against this backdrop and others that the UN and The Hague should step in, introducing a resolution intended to end the US-backed, Saudi-led war on Yemen. The resolution should end US arms transfers to Saudi Arabia, as requiring the White House to certify that the Saudi-led coalition is taking all feasible precautions to minimize civilian casualties is not going to mean anything at all – let alone end the human suffering there.

The UN and the International Criminal Court in The Hague are in the know that the people of Yemen can take no more and that they need to react fast. Innocent people are suffering from unlawful airstrikes because the US supports the Saudi-led coalition and because US weapons have been used against civilian populations. This is an international legal problem the UN and the ICC should be paying more attention to. If they won’t try to curtail the ongoing Us-backed war crimes by Saudi Arabia and the rest of the coalition, no other world body would ever step in to make clear – by using its own power to end the war – that the lives of Yemeni civilian can no longer be disregarded.

The art of designing conflict

By  Peter Koenig

Supporters of the Shiite Huthi rebels take part in a demonstration against the
Saudi-led coalition’s ‘Operation Decisive Storm’ against their movement on
April 6, in the old city of the Yemeni capital Sanaa

Yemen

As usual, western media are deliberately confusing in communicating on the latest Mid-East conflict which eventually led to the recent atrocious bombing of Yemen by the US-directed Saudi alliance, including Qatar and other Gulf monarchies. They are proxies, to be sure, for their Washington masters. My heart is bleeding for Yemen, a country of warm and generous people I got to know well, working with them in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Yemen is a patchwork of tribes, the result of former colonies, therefore made vulnerable for conflicts; easily ignitable conflicts. A situation left behind on purpose by the old British colonial masters, today servants to the Washington Empire. That’s the name of the game throughout the Middle East – and eventually throughout the world. Divide and rule– by Zionist-Anglo-Saxon organized and never-ending chaos.

It is certainly true, wherever the US and its NATO cronies put their heavy boots, they create lasting misery and chaos. But these never-ending implanted internal conflicts and civil wars in far-away countries are produced by design, not to end soon. They are multi-benefit endeavors, lubricating the US war machine, assuring the ‘need’ for US intervention and occupation, and they are paving the way for US, western transnational corporations’ unabated and merciless exploitation of the victims’ riches, looting their natural resources and enslaving their people. The globalized warriors, the emperor’s proxy armies, NATO and NATO-CIA trained mercenaries encounter little resistance from the population. People oppressed by civil strife have no time and energy to defend their rights, resources and country. They must fight for their sheer survival.

The current conflicts and proxy-wars in the Middle East are complex and complicated. My gut feeling, though, tells me that the wars are not really about sectarian conflicts; they are not about Shias battling Sunnis. They are part of a bigger picture, driven by Washington to achieve its final objective, worldwide hegemony, Full Spectrum Dominance. The emperor’s clients, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf States, kingdoms of tyranny, and more surprisingly, the European Union, they have all become henchmen for empire, following Washington’s marching orders.

The recent brutal attack on Yemen is US-supported and led by Saudi Wahhabis, an aggressive fundamentalist off-shoot of Sunni Islam. Fighting a proxy war against the Shia Muslims in Iran and the Yemeni Houthis, a secular off-spring of Shia Islam, as well as Syria with its ruling Ba’ath party (a socialist faction of Sunnis) – is a win-win, serving the big trans-Atlantic master, as well as Riyadh’s key objectives - regime change in Syria and annihilating Iran.

Yemen’s Houthis, a Zaydi sect of Shia Muslims, congregated themselves in the early 1990s as a secular progressive group of ‘Young Believers’. As crusaders for peace they helped poor communities and organized youth camps in the northern Saada province. With President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s Government becoming increasingly repressive against any movement with a socialist connotation, the Houtis grew rapidly into an army of young men, soon becoming a dominating force in the North. They were seeking democracy, openly opposing the US-Saudi supported dictator, who was kept in power by Washington since 1978. The Houthis organized a first uprising against the Saleh Government in 2004, but were defeated by Saleh’s brutal army with heavy backing by the Saudi tyrants.

Under continuous popular (and Houthi) pressure and with Washington’s nod, Saleh finally stepped down in February 2012, ceding power to his Vice President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. The Houthis, by now a large constituency of left leaning Shias, wanted a more egalitarian representation in Parliament. They attracted small parties and like-minded Muslim splinter groups to form a coalition. Among them was the new ‘Arab Spring’ party, led by a woman and with an anti-capitalist discourse. They emerged from the mass movement against President Saleh in 2011.  The Houtis eventually succeeded in taking control by storming government buildings and Parliament in January 2015. Hadi resigned, fled to his native Aden and eventually received safe conduct to the monarchy of Saudi Arabia.

The Houtis hastily formed a five-member transition government and intended to write a new Constitution with democratic principles. However after the Washington-backed Saudi airstrikes on 25 March 2015, the leadership of Yemen is in a state uncertainty. The last thing Washington wants in the strategic southern tip of the Arab Peninsula is a socialist government.

ISIS and al-Qaeda are both involved in the Yemen conflict. They represent the epitome of western created terror armies. They continue to be supported as well as fought by Washington and its western stooges. They are bombed by NATO and its Middle Eastern allies in disguise for western propaganda. In reality they receive weapons and food deliveries from NATO and other western powers and are leading proxy wars for Washington – in Iraq, Syria – and, yes, in Yemen. ISIS helps keeping the US / NATO killing and cash machine alive and well.

With some notable exceptions, the so-called Arab Spring is basically a CIA / Mossad driven destabilizing force throughout the Middle East and North Africa with the objective of establishing neo-colonial rulers, similar to those western instigated, US / NATO led ‘color revolutions’ in the former Soviet Republics. Some exceptions include the West Sahara, Bahrein and even Egypt, where at one point genuine socialist movements infiltrated the US / Mossad sponsored rebellions. The new Yemeni Arab Spring party also appears to belong to the exceptions.

These newly flaring-up conflicts in the Middle East, and now especially the systematic destruction and partition of Yemen, is part of a bigger picture: a strategic move subjugating the Middle East by organized chaos. Domination of Yemen is an important step on the Zionist-Anglo-Saxon Empire’s path towards world hegemony. Yemen at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, and Somalia, at the Horn of Africa, already subdued to empire’s bidding, are among the most strategic spots for controlling the entire Middle East and Gulf States. They constitute direct links to the US and French military bases in Djibouti and to Diego Garcia, the British island in the Indian Ocean, leased to the US military in the 1960’s – which today hosts the largest US naval base outside the US mainland. Through this geographic triangle Washington and NATO are effectively controlling the entire Indian Ocean.

Yemen, like Ukraine, is just another square on the geopolitical chess board which the exceptional nation aims to dominate. However, revolutions and social upheavals from all corners of the globe are gradually encroaching on empire’s hegemony. Moreover, the looming economic power shift to the East will be the final blow on the way to Washington’s demise.