Saudi Arabia dishonoring international laws: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed Scott Bennett, a former US army psychological warfare officer and counter-terrorism analyst in San Francisco, about Amnesty International calling for a suspension in the transfer of weapons and munitions to Saudi Arabia.

What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: The significance of Amnesty International weighing in on this and saying that Saudis need to stop and that they have been using illegal weapons.

Bennett: Either we are a world of law and order and countries respect the laws that they agree to abide by, or we are a world where countries can dishonor their agreements.

They can be hypocrites. They can be liars and not honor the laws that they agree to. And this is a perfect example. If you are using cluster bombs, then you are violating international agreements. You have no honor, you are a liar and a hypocrite, and that goes for Saudi Arabia. That goes for the United States under President Obama and the Congress.

So we need to work backwards and find out what has actually been used, and whether in violation of the international laws. Now it should be no surprise, to be honest with you, that President Obama, being himself a self-proclaimed Sunni Muslim, has backed the Sunni Muslim nations of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, all of the [Persian] Gulf nations, purely for energy reasons, but he has empowered those nations to engage in the Jihad into Syria and destabilize Syria with the ultimate goal of destabilizing Iran. That is not a surprise. President Putin has seen it and knows it. Syria knows it. Most of the post-Soviet countries, the Eastern European countries know it. Iran knows it, and we see that in President Obama’s statements.

However, the bright spot is even though there is darkness in President Obama being himself, again a Saudi Arabian Sunni backer, and he is pushing with everything he has to have a Sunni takeover of Syria, the bright spot is President Putin is now ascending into the United Nations Security Council position, so he can call forth demands for investigations. He can call forth investigations into genocide and ethnic cleansing, which the Saudi Arabians are guilty of.

Press TV: Let us look at that because it seems that Washington is very complicit in all of this with Saudi Arabia, though you say that Obama is a Sunni Muslim, which is entertaining for us in this part of the world, I would tell you that much, but, anyway, with this situation the United States seems very, very much complicit, obviously it is not a one-man show that is being run by the United States.

Why is the United States, in general, silent in dealing with this, not just silent, obviously looking the other way and also helping logistically with the situation against Yemen. Why? What is it in the interest of the United States to basically try to destroy the Yemenis?

Bennett: It has been driven by oil and energy for the past fifty years. It has been very short-sighted, it has been very stupid. Most of the aristocracy in the American military have always been on the side of more Iran and Russia, because they are the aristocratic nations in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and some of these [Persian] Gulf nations, they are the ones who are paying for the Jihadists to go in and conduct sex slavery of the Alawite women and the Christian women, of the Kurdish women. It is not the Iranians or the Syrians, it is the Saudi Arabians. They are the ones guilty of the slavery, the beheadings, the boy rape and everything that is obscene under Islam, and they have given Islam such a bad name that Americans lump all Muslims with the bad behavior of the Saudi Arabians and some of these Sunni [Persian] Gulf nations.

And I think Americans are starting to pick up and understand that there is a difference between the Shia and the Sunni. They are starting to see that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, all of the [Persian] Gulf nations have been backing and financing these ISIS (Daesh) terrorists, who have been plundering Syria and trying to conquer it with Obama’s support financially and militarily, with Turkey’s support, and they are just now learning of this, and I know it sounds hard to believe, but America has been subjected to a brainwashing for the past fifteen years that started under September 11, 2001, but they are starting to really grasp that we have been on this crusade that has been completely reckless, completely destructive of the Middle East, it has not yielded anything positive, it has destroyed these nations, it has destroyed Libya, it has destroyed Iraq, it is causing a mass exodus of millions of people into Europe and the American citizens are aghast and horrified but they do not necessarily know what to do.

Press TV: With all due respect, first of all with the Saudis, they are Wahhabis and not Sunnis, in general, but when we look at the situation when you are talking about that the Americans are waking up, but we look at what is happening; on the one hand you are saying Americans are waking up to the reality of who the Saudis are and on international front, government levels, we see that the Saudis have just been rewarded basically by chairing now and dealing with human rights in the United Nations. So there obviously is a schism between governments and the people and at the end of the day, it is the governments that rule. So will anything change as far as United States’ policy towards Saudi Arabia, specifically when we see more than 6,000 civilians in Yemen have died and are continuing to die?

Bennett: That hopefully will result in a change in US policy. I think you are having more leader stand-up in Congress and hopefully in the presidential elections, which is going to say as you wisely identified this is not about a Sunni movement, this is about the Wahhabist ideology. The Wahhabist ideology is more of a Jihadi militant aggressive campaign to conquer, and I think Americans are starting to understand that difference between the more peaceful elements of Islam and these kamikaze violent elements.

Now you would hope that increased leadership in the United States is going to look at Iran, look at the agreements, look at the success of Vladimir Putin’s movement into Syria, and I think with the anti-ISIS military operations now being conducted, you will have an instant quelling of the ISIS problem.

I think Russia has done an incredible job. It should be applauded with flowers and parades around Europe and the rest of the world for cleansing the country and the world of a cancer that has been destroying historical sites, doing horrendous murders and beheadings and rapes and pillages and it was not Iran or Syria doing this, it was the Saudi Wahhabist backers of this ideology…

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