Saudi regime not stable, cannot last very long: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed Anthony Hall, professor of globalization at Lethbridge University, to discuss Britain’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia amid months of Riyadh’s campaign against Yemen.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: What is going on? On the one hand we have the Saudi onslaught where they are killing innocent civilians everyday and also attacking the infrastructure in Yemen and then we have the UK at the same time selling arms, selling supplies that this brutal regime can use to up the ante its offensive against Yemen. Why is that the case?  Why doesn’t London cut off those arms sales?

Hall: Here is yet another example that we are living in the law of the jungle essentially. The international system is entirely broken and this Western support for the brutal regime in Saudi Arabia, which beheads its own people at a great rate, which is belligerent, supplying arms in Syria and now Yemen at a great rate, destroying the infrastructure of civilians, this is a reflection of a plague of war crimes, of crimes against humanity, that the arms industry in the West prevails and those interests come above human rights.    

Press TV: What is it going to take to change this situation? We talk about it all the time as far as the injustice and we have these powers like the UK, like the US and other entities that the arms sales, that is all that is important, selling the airplanes, that is all that is important and they are basically propping up these brutal regimes and at the same time talk about democracy and human rights. What is it going to take to change this hypocritical type of situation that we have, this status quo?

Hall: The Saudi regime is not stable. It cannot last very long. Prince Salman has taken control of the oil, is doing repression of his own people, the beheading of Sheikh al-Nimr shows and the others who were beheaded along with him. The war crimes in Yemen are an example of the use of Saudi Arabia as a kind of puppet regime, as an expression of the Saudi-Israeli axis. The Saudi regime cannot be sustained. It does not have any popular support. It is living totally outside the rule of law of the international system and it is kind of the smoking gun. It demonstrates the poverty in the West, the disparity between rhetoric and action supporting such a brutal regime, arming it.

In Canada we have a 15-billion-dollar deal to provide armored personnel carriers which would be used presumably against Saudis' own people. This violates all kinds of international treaties. Justin Trudeau’s regime is continuing the Stephen Harper cozying up to Saudi Arabia. It is a very obscene picture right now.

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