Yemen war to backfire on Saudis , times worse: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed Navid Nasr, a political analyst, in Zagreb, to discuss Saudi Arabia’s ongoing military campaign against Yemen.

The following is a rough transcription.

Press TV: Death and destruction is on the rise in Yemen with no signs of ending. Until when do you think this war will continue?

Nasr: That is a good question. I have been wrestling with that myself. I have been on Press TV before, I have been asked the same question, I genuinely don’t know what the end game is for the Saudis here. One possible thing could be that they are angling for some sort of split along the north, south lines in the country with putting their own preferred ruler back in power, but no in Sana’a, in Aden. That is a possibility.

There are a lot of southern Yemenis who have longstanding issues or grievances with the Houthis that are not really based on rational things. Anyway, there are a lot of southern Yemenis, actually I have seen them, who openly cheer on the Saudi intervention and even the Saudi bombing of Sana’a, as disgusting as that is.

So there is a possibility that if AQAP, ISIS (Daesh), or the Saudi, Emirati and Qatari military gain some sort of foothold in the south, that is what they are angling for. Other than that I don’t know what they hope to achieve other than just causing death and destruction and pounding the people of Yemen into submission. They can try to do that but the fact is any kind of military campaign like this, and at this point it is beyond doubt that it is a deliberate terroristic destruction of civilian targets and people’s lives that is being enacted here Yemen.

There is no doubt that any campaign like this is not going to foster the spirit of surrender in the people that it is targeting. It is only going to cause resentment, anger, bitterness and hatred at the people who are enacting it and sooner or later, it will come back to the Saudis and it will come back to them tenfold.

Press TV: Just recently, Saudi Arabia was appointed as the chair of a human rights panel by the UN, which was highly criticized. Just how scandalous and hypocritical was this decision by the UN and how damaging could it be for the credibility of the UN, not to mention how will it leave the Yemenis in despair?

Nasr: It wont really have any impact on Yemen in any way. It is not as if the UN was going to be savior of Yemen here. All it impacts is the further deterioration of the reputation of the UN; its reputation has never really  been that high anyway outside of maybe Europe and North America. Its reputation has never been that high anyway.

This just makes it a complete and total laughingstock, the idea of Saudi Arabia, right in the middle of this barbaric, brutal and devastating campaign on Yemen… you asked me what kind of hypocrisy? Monumental, in one word. Monumental hypocrisy! There is no other way to describe it.

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