Saudis implementing US colonial plan in Yemen: Commentator

Press TV has conducted an interview with Naseer al-Omari, an author and political commentator in New York, to discuss Saudi Arabia’s military aggression against Yemen.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Dr. Omari, besides its ideology, militarily speaking, how powerful and resistant is Ansarullah in the face of the Saudi aggression?

Omari: Well, in the long-run, the Houthis and Ali Abdullah Saleh, the ex-ruler of Yemen are Yemenis. They have roots in Yemen. They are not going anywhere. This is a major component of the Yemeni’s society.

We are not talking about some rogue group who will pack up and leave the country any time soon. We are talking about a huge percentage of people in Yemen who support the ex-president as well as the Houthis who are Yemenis and Arabs.

So depicting them as aggressors, as people who need to be stopped, is very, very misleading. There has to be a way for the international community to view this conflict in a realistic way away from the Saudi agenda.

The Saudi royal family has implemented the colonial aspirations of the United States unfortunately. They are a continuation of that colonialist relationship between the Arab world represented by these dictators, not the people, and the successive American administrations who have worked closely with these dictators to oppress freedom, to sell them weapons so far over the last few years.

Saudi Arabia alone has spent 46 billion dollars on weapons - money that could have helped the Yemenis or the Syrians or the Iraqis. Unfortunately buying these weapons is important for American companies.  

So the Houthis are right when they say this colonial relationship with the Arab world is unfortunately implemented and overseen by successive American administrations and this is what we see in Yemen unfortunately.

Press TV: And Saudi Arabia launched this war on Yemen without any mandate from the United Nations. How likely will Saudi Arabia be held accountable for killing innocent civilians who have not taken part in this war and which amounts to a war crime?  

Omari: Very unlikely, as likely as the Israelis have been held accountable by the international community. And this goes back to what I said earlier. This relationship with even the ex-dictator of Yemen, he was sponsored and supported by both the United States and Saudi Arabia and now they turn against him when they supported him and propped him for many, many years.

So that hypocrisy, one day you are the enemy, another day you are a friend of Saudi Arabia, that hypocrisy is stunning. Unfortunately a lot of people in the region cannot see through this hypocrisy because they are fed all this rhetoric about the Houthis being Shias or being loyal to Iran when in fact these are Yemenis and they are speaking in sectarian terms.   

They are closer to their Yemeni brothers and sisters than anybody else, but right now this war is being presented even to the Saudi people as a war against the Shias.

So again we go back to the agenda of this regime and the destructive use of terrorists throughout the Arab world.

AHK/HMV

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