Saudis achieved no war objectives in Yemen: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed Shabbir Hassanally, a political analyst in Leicester, to discuss Saudi Arabia’s ongoing military aggression against Yemen.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: What is going on in Yemen in your perspective? Now we have seen more bombings today, on the one hand it is saying that it is Daesh but al-Qaeda used to be in control, but the pro-Hadi group threw them out. Tell me about the complications, what is exactly going on in Yemen in your perspective?

Hassanally: I think the game that the Arab Zionist, the Saudi family are playing in Yemen is beginning to massively unravel and clearly when you create a psychotic group like al-Qaeda or Daesh or whatever name they want to be called this afternoon, you are going to get some sort of blowback, this is a given, and I think the Saudis, the Emiratis and all of the other corrupted dynasties that have decided to go into Yemen for no valid reason, illegally they have gone into Yemen, a country that was already ravaged by proxies of Saudi and Israel, it is beginning to come unstuck because obviously the people now know that the Saudis have no interest in peace. They have been through several peace cycles, if you like, and each time the Saudis have just continued bombing as if nothing is happening.

And so Daesh of course is being beaten in Syria and in Iraq and to a lesser extent in Libya and other places and so it is nervous and so it is doing things to try and consolidate its own position and we must remember there is no love lost at least on the surface between Daesh and the Saudi oligarchs, at least on the surface. Of course we know that the Saudis are also part of the problem, they are funding Daesh and so is Israel, so is America, we know this, and the idea is to create chaos because if there is chaos in that region it justifies America coming in. We have already seen American troops go into Yemen and after American troops go in the situation obviously gets worse because this is what happens when America goes anywhere. America is like ..., it has like the Medusa Touch where anything it touches just turns to dust, it self-destructs.  

Press TV: So in your perspective, because as we know at the same time these explosions are happening, we also know that the so-called peace talks are still taking place in Kuwait and dealing with the various warring sides in Yemen. In your perspective what has to happen in order to bring peace and stability back to Yemen?

Hassanally: I think realistically the only way you are going to get peace and stability back to Yemen is if the Yemeni people as a group, as a whole, are allowed to determine their own future. You cannot have Saudi or Israel or America or anyone determine the future of a nation for them. This does not work.

We have seen it time and time again, certainly the United Nations and other groups do not seem to get it but really people need to like back off, the other countries need to back off, they need to stop bombing and they need to let the Yemeni people discuss with each other without any external influence and when I say Yemeni, I do not mean people like this Mansur Hadi and his people who are not Yemeni, they are Yemeni only because they might have been born there, really these people are Saudi Zionists but the actual people of Yemen who are represented by Ansarullah and the Houthi movement at large but not just the Houthis, all of the people of Yemen need to get together, they need to decide and this was what was happening just over a year ago when the Saudis decided to start bombing because they saw that Yemen was coming together as a people and they were going to determine their own future without being a client of the Saudis or Israel or America or anyone and until this is done unfortunately we are just going to keep on having carnage in that country.   

Press TV: But why is Yemen so important that we see so many external players involved in this situation?  

Hassanally: Well first of all Yemen is one of the oldest civilizations in terms of that region and secondly you have a very strategic waterway which is controlled by Yemen, which ideally is controlled by Yemen although the Saudis keep trying to wrest control of it, and that is the Bab el-Mandeb Strait because on one side you have the Faw Peninsula and you have the Strait of Hormuz which are controlled by the Islamic Republic of Iran and on the other side you have the Bab el-Mandeb Strait which [is] Yemeni and the Saudis and the Israelis and all of these people need these for their trade, for their transportation of goods back and forth and they need to have control and America does not want anyone having control of anything that is potentially not an ally of America.

If someone is not an ally of America, if someone says I have got my own mind, I am going to make my own decision then America has a very big problem with this. It is scared of people who think on their own and this is I believe one of the reasons.

The second reason is the Saudis desperately need a win. The Saudis were losing in Syria and in Iraq, through Daesh they were losing, they still are losing and they figured that they can go into Yemen, they can smash Yemen and Yemen is, what is Yemen, it is one of the poorest countries in the world, it will not be able to resist but of course we can see now that Yemen has given the Saudis a very bloody nose and they do not really know how to react because just like the Israelis in other battles they have achieved none of their war objectives and they are just acting like the war criminals that they are and they need to be brought to trial.  

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