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US-Saudi military ties violate many international laws: Academic

Monday, 15 February 2016 3:16 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 15 February 2016 3:16 PM ]

“The US [military] relationship with Saudi Arabia violates many international laws,” said James Petras, a professor emeritus of sociology at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York.

US support of Saudi Arabia’s war against Yemen is a violation of international laws and aimed at boosting the profits of the US military–industrial complex, an American writer and retired professor says.

“The US [military] relationship with Saudi Arabia violates many international laws,” said James Petras, a professor emeritus of sociology at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York, and adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada.

“The Saudi monarchy is an absolutist dictatorship, Saudi Arabia is violating all international norms by attacking Yemen and bombing civilian sites,” Petras told Press TV on Monday.

“Saudi Arabia has been funding Wahhabi extremists in Syria who have engaged in atrocities throughout the past four years,” he added.

Human Rights Watch released a report Sunday providing new indications that Saudi Arabia has fired US-made cluster munitions in Yemen, saying the use of such weapons, which are banned by international treaties, may also violate American laws.

“Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners, as well as their US supplier, are blatantly disregarding the global standard that says cluster munitions should never be used under any circumstances,” Steve Goose, the arms director at Human Rights Watch, said in the report.

If confirmed, the report could put new pressure on the United States over support for its ally Saudi Arabia in the Yemen war.

Washington’s supply of cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia “is part of a larger arms sales that involves close to $50 billion and this plays a very important role in the military–industrial complex of the US economy,” Petras said.

These sales are “linked to the profits that are made by certain industrial sectors of the US economy,” he noted.

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