Royadh scared of democracy in Yemen, spillover to Saudi Arabia: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Jim W. Dean, a political analyst, about recent developments in Yemen.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: The Yemenis went through a peaceful political process internally, which led to the creation of the new supreme governing council, which is now willing to reach out to the former President Hadi’s camp to have a truly inclusive government in the country. Is it a time for the Saudis to back off and let the Yemenis decide their own fate?

Dean: It sure is; but I was thinking, as I read the story, the movie of “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.” The good part is by the Yemenis. Forming a coalition group amongst all the different opposition groups after the last peace talks broke down shows that the usual divide-and-conquer game by powerful entities has not worked with a small little country, lots of tribes, the one you would think would be very easy to do the divide-and-conquer... And here they’ve gone and not only formed that initial government but they’ve extended bringing in the Hadi forces into it to make it an all-inclusive government. But they’re not talking about bringing the Saudis into it. So, that’s the good part.

The bad is, Kerry, while he was in Saudi Arabia, came up with his plan, which was an embarrassment, which was nothing more than the Houthis have to surrender, because when you ask somebody to turn over all of your weapons to a third party, that’s a surrender. You didn’t hear him say, ‘both the Saudis and the Yemenis should turn their weapons over to a third-party.’ He said, ‘No, just little Yemen should do it.’ So, what he did there is he made a mistake. He did show that Saudi Arabia was afraid to really negotiate with the Yemenis if they had any weapons in their hands.

And then, of course, the ugly part of it is every ceasefire that we’ve had so far in this thing, the Saudis have just kept bombing because they figured... they wanted... to still keep thinking, they’re going to be able to hit the weapons depot, they’re going to destroy the command center. And obviously, the Yemenis have shown that they can’t do that.

Press TV: And why do you think it’s imperative for Riyadh to have the last say in how Yemen is run and who runs it? It’s going to bomb and kill innocent civilians to get its way, why?

Dean: Because I’'s the royals fighting for their lives here; and it’s not because Yemen is a military threat, it’s because of the political threat. They cannot have a group of Arab people, Muslim people, right on their border that are being governed, people are voting on who they want to have rule over them and what their laws are going to be.

With that record and that example on Saudi Arabia’s border, the royals know that that is going to spread like wildfire within Saudi Arabia themselves; and not only will they be thrown out of government but the people will take back the wealth that the 10,000 princes and princesses own and they will have that themselves.

And they know that if Yemeni has democracy, the royal family will go down with or without the US backing them.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk