US rewarding S Arabia for services in Yemen: Analyst

The US is finalizing arms deals worth over 100 billion dollars with Saudi Arabia to boost the country's military capabilities, a senior White House official said.  

Talking to Reuters on Saturday on condition of anonymity, the official noted that the deals cover sales of arms and ships as well as maintenance services. The source also added that the deals are part of a 300-billion-dollar package to boost Saudi military capabilities in ten years. According to the source, the signing of the contracts is part of the agenda of the US President Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia next week.

In an exclusive interview with PressTV, Jan Oberg, the founder of transnational.org, said that the main objective behind Washington’s huge arms sales to Riyadh is to prepare the country for final confrontation with Syria and its main ally, Iran.

“It is a build-up of a [Persian] Gulf country against Syria and Iran," the analyst said, explaining that "the military expenditures in Saudi Arabia today is about the third or the fourth largest military power on earth [and] according to some bigger than Russia. Adding to this, Saudi Arabia’s military expenditure is five times bigger than Iran’s and if you get the [Persian] Gulf countries and add them to this, it is ten times bigger than Iran’s military expenditures.” 

"This is not logic. This is not real politic. This is the rearm of militarist, irrationality and it is dead dangerous for the next 50 or 20 years in the Middle East and it should stop," he urged.

Oberg also reiterated that this deal is a flagrant support of terrorism in the region and a reward for Saudi Arabia due to its services in Yemen, where it is contravening all kinds of international law.

"So, it is a very sad situation that the only thing the US can do is to sell arms no matter what the problem is. Diplomacy is fading, military is increasing," he concluded. 

Since March 2015, Saudi warplanes have been heavily bombarding Yemen in an attempt to crush the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement and reinstall the resigned president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

Latest tallies show that the imposed war has so far killed over 12,000 Yemenis and wounded thousands more. The Saudi aggression has also taken a heavy toll on the country's facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools, and factories.

Nearly 3.3 million Yemenis, including 2.1 million children, are currently suffering from acute malnutrition, while more than seven million people are grappling with starvation. The figures, however, could drastically increase if the Saudi war machine continues to breathe fire on Yemeni people.  

Riyadh has been importing tens of billions of dollars of arms from the US over the past years. Saudi Arabia has been leading a two-year onslaught on Yemen and is considered a major arms supplier to terrorists in Syria.

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