Tag Archives: saudis

Here’s Why the Saudis Love Trump

by Clair9767hao Posted on May 21, 2017

Mother Jones

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Last year, President Obama offered Saudi Arabia an arms deal worth $115 billion. President Trump just closed a deal valued at only $110 billion. He’s also spoken viciously about Islam on the campaign trail and tried to ban the entry of visitors from seven Muslim countries. And yet the Saudis are thrilled to have Trump in office. Why? Molly Hennessy-Fiske explains:

The White House they see now is presided over by a strong leader — a model Gulf monarchs recognize from their own governing styles — and if Trump surrounds himself with business-friendly family members high in his administration, well, so do they.

….“The GCC countries are not only excited about Trump, but the people he’s chosen to have around him,” said Alibrahim, who dismissed Obama as “the worst president ever,” unwilling to confront Iran and its Shiite Muslim proxies in Syria and neighboring Yemen, whom the Sunni leaders of the Gulf see as rivals.

….“Trump is a welcome change from Barack Obama because he does not remind them, does not pressure them, about American values and ideas about human rights and democracy. This president is a hardcore realist: He just doesn’t care. This goes well with many leaders in this part of the world,” Gerges said.

Trump has already impressed Gulf Arab leaders by escalating the war against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria and supporting the Saudi fight against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

As far as Saudi Arabia is concerned, Trump’s anti-Muslim rabble-rousing is just red meat for the American rubes. They don’t take anything Trump says seriously, only what he does. And what’s clear is that (a) Trump’s personal brand of corruption is reassuringly Middle Eastern, (b) he hates Iran, (c) he’s not going to harass the Saudis over trivia like human rights, and (d) he doesn’t care how brutal they get in their war against the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

That’s it. That’s all they care about. Trump isn’t bringing in more business and he’s not selling them more arms. Nor is his actual policy toward Iran and Yemen more than a few degrees different from Obama’s. He’s just carrying it out with no strings attached. They like that.

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Here’s Why the Saudis Love Trump

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The United States Just Canceled an Arms Deal With Saudi Arabia

by NormanCombs79 Posted on December 13, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Obama administration has canceled an arms deal with Saudi Arabia amid growing concerns about the high civilian death toll from the kingdom’s air campaign in Yemen. “We continue to have concerns about the conflict in Yemen and how it has been waged, most especially the air campaign,” a State Department official told Mother Jones in an email. The blocked sale reportedly involves precision-guided munitions built by the American defense contractor Raytheon.

Saudi Arabia has been repeatedly criticized for committing potential war crimes in its war against the Houthi rebels who ousted the Saudi-backed government of President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi in January 2015. Throughout the nearly two-year-long conflict, the Saudis have used American and British weapons, including banned cluster bombs. The United States has also provided refueling missions and intelligence. Saudi airstrikes have hit weddings, funerals, hospitals, schools, markets, and places of worship, killing hundreds of civilians.

Between 2009 and 2015, the Obama administration inked more than $100 billion worth of arms deals with Riyadh. Just last week, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced the approval of yet another deal, worth $3.5 billion, for Chinook helicopters and related equipment, training, and support.

Yet today’s announcement may be a sign of the Obama administration’s growing discomfort with the war. In May, it canceled the sale of US-made cluster bombs. In September, the Senate held its first debate to question the decision to continue supplying the Saudis. “There is a US imprint on every civilian death inside Yemen, which is radicalizing the people of Yemen against the United States,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said at the time. “There really is no way this bombing campaign could happen without United States participation.”

The State Department official, who asked not to be named, said the United States is exploring how to refocus training the Saudi air force to address its targeting practices. The official also stated that the State Department, the Pentagon, and other agencies are reviewing current policy “to ensure that our limited support for the Saudi-led Coalition is consistent with our foreign policy goals and values.” A senior administration official told AFP that “US security cooperation is not a blank check.”

President-elect Donald Trump has not outlined his policy on Yemen. However, during a January campaign rally with Sarah Palin, he suggested that Iran is destabilizing Yemen and seeks to take over Saudi Arabia:

Now they’re going into Yemen. And if you look at Yemen, take a look, they’re going to get Syria, they’re going to get Yemen, unless—trust me, a lot of good things are going to happen if I get in, but let’s leave it the way it is. They get Syria. They get Yemen. Now, they didn’t want Yemen, but did you ever see the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia? They want Saudi Arabia.

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The United States Just Canceled an Arms Deal With Saudi Arabia

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Three Unfortunate Facts About Yemen

by FrederiGamboa Posted on October 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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Six years ago I read a pair of articles about Yemen which predicted that its population would double by 2035; oil revenue would decline to zero by 2017; and the capital city of Sanaa would run out of water by 2015. Today I got curious: How are those forecasts panning out?

Population: On target. Yemen’s population has increased from 23.6 million to 27.5 million since 2010—an annual growth rate of 2.58 percent. If this continues, Yemen’s population will double by 2037.

Oil revenue: On target. Yemen is currently producing a meager 22,000 barrels of oil daily. In fairness, much of this is due not to pumping their fields literally dry, but to infrastructure destruction during the current civil war. They still have proven reserves of about 3 billion barrels, so production could rise again if the war ever ends.

Water: On target? Adela Jones of USC writes: “Already, Yemenis allocate up to 30% of their annual income towards water….As early as 2017, Sana’a may officially run out of water. Given consumption trends, the rest of the nation may follow.”

I remain fairly ignorant about Yemen, aside from the fact that it’s the site of a brutal proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran—in Saudi Arabia’s view, anyway—and we’ve been assisting the Saudis since it started. But Yemen’s future looks pretty bleak no matter who wins. What happens when they finally pump the last of the groundwater and there’s nothing left?

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Three Unfortunate Facts About Yemen

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Saudi Arabia Killed Nearly 100 Civilians In Yemen With American-Made Bombs

by YoungT08gxixm Posted on April 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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A Saudi airstrike hit a crowded marketplace in Mastaba, Yemen, on March 15, killing at least 97 civilians, including 25 children. “We saw people shredded to pieces. Some with no head, no hands…Unrecognizable,” one survivor told Human Rights Watch when a researcher from the organization investigated the site two weeks later.

It was one of the deadliest strikes in 12-month-old civil war, highlighting the devastating use of weapons supplied by the United States and other Western countries in attacks that human rights organizations call potential war crimes.

In Mastaba, Human Rights Watch came across what it says are remnants of an American-made MK-84 bomb paired with a “smart bomb” guidance kit. The group also reviewed images of remnants of another bomb found by British journalists and determined it to be the same kind. These 2,000-pound general purpose bombs are the largest of their class and are capable of inflicting massive damage on their targets.

The Saudi-led coalition has been criticized for carrying out indiscriminate bombings in the civil war, which began last year after rebel forces seized control of the government. The air campaign is responsible for the vast majority of the conflict’s civilian deaths, according to the United Nations. An airstrike in February that resulted in at least 32 civilian deaths led UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to call for an investigation.

Remnant of an American-made satellite-guided bomb found at the scene of the Mastaba market airstrike. Human Rights Watch

Western governments have also come under fire for their roles in the conflict. In December, a group of lawyers wrote a legal opinion stating that the United Kingdom is breaking domestic, European, and international law by supplying weapons to Saudi Arabia. A lawsuit filed in March seeks to overturn a $15 billion Canadian arms deal with Saudi Arabia. An international movement to seek an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia is growing.

Despite providing weapons, intelligence, drones, and other assistance to the Saudis, the United States has so far been subjected to less scrutiny. In the past year, the Obama administration has inked arms deals with Riyadh worth more than $20 billion.

Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that the first MK-84 bomb struck near the entrance of the Mastaba market at around noon, and five minutes later, the second bomb hit, killing and wounding both those who were trying to escape and others helping the victims. The day after the strike, a team of UN investigators visited the site and compiled the names of the 97 civilian victims. And they found another 10 bodies “burned beyond recognition,” bringing the death toll to 107.

“Even after dozens of airstrikes on markets, schools, hospitals, and residential neighborhoods have killed hundreds of Yemeni civilians, the coalition refuses to provide redress or change its practices,” Priyanka Motaparthy, emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “The US and others should pull the plug on arms to the Saudis or further share responsibility for civilian lives lost.”

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Saudi Arabia Killed Nearly 100 Civilians In Yemen With American-Made Bombs

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Everything You Need to Know About the Iran-Saudi Arabia Crisis

by GlennLance Posted on January 4, 2016

Mother Jones

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Relations between Shiite Iran and its oil-rich Sunni neighbors across the Persian Gulf have never been warm, and the civil wars in Syria and Yemen have fueled mistrust and proxy battles between the two countries for years. But even those conflicts didn’t manage to bring about the diplomatic meltdown that occurred this weekend, when Saudi Arabia severed ties with Iran and significantly ramped up tensions between two of the Middle East’s most powerful players.

What happened? Saudi Arabia rang in the new year by executing 47 prisoners on Saturday. One of them was a Shiite cleric named Nimr al-Nimr, a longtime critic of the Saudi government who was accused by Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir during an interview with Reuters of “agitating, organizing cells, and providing them with weapons and money.” In response, protesters attacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran. Shortly thereafter Saudi Arabia ceased diplomatic relations with Iran.

Bahrain and Sudan have since joined the Saudis in cutting diplomatic ties, and the United Arab Emirates “downgraded” its relations with Iran by recalling its ambassador and reducing staff in Tehran. The Saudis also announced other steps, including cutting off flights between Iran and Saudi Arabia and banning Saudis from traveling to the Islamic Republic.

Why does it matter? Both Saudi Arabia and Iran are major players in international trade, as well as in various conflicts playing out throughout the Middle East, and outright hostility between the two countries could bleed over in many ways.

The diplomatic crisis could affect efforts to broker peace in Syria. Both Saudi Arabia and Iran are deeply enmeshed in Syria’s civil war. Saudis fund Islamist rebels in Syria while Iran supplies weapons, soldiers, money, and diplomatic backing to the Syrian government along with extensive support to its close ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah. Both countries are also important players in any attempt at a peace process for Syria. The UN special envoy for Syria hoped to restart peace talks between the Syrian opposition and the Assad regime this month, but a collapse in Saudi-Iranian relations could sink negotiations before they get going again. “We were hoping that a diplomatic solution could be found to the Syrian crisis in the next few months. Forget about it,” Fawaz Gerges, a Middle Eastern studies professor at the London School of Economics, told CNN.

It could worsen Yemen’s civil war. Saudi Arabia’s southern neighbor, normally ruled by a Sunni-led government, is under the control of a Shiite rebel group called the Houthis. The Saudis launched an air campaign against those rebels in March and has been bombing Yemen ever since. While the campaign hasn’t dislodged the Houthis, it has killed more than 1,000 civilians by the United Nation’s estimate and laid waste to the capital of Sanaa. While Iran supports the Houthis, Yemen experts believe Iran hasn’t backed them in the same large-scale way as it has Hezbollah. But if tensions continue to rise with Saudi Arabia, Iran could be tempted to ratchet up its involvement in Yemen.

World powers are watching the situation closely. Russia has allied itself with Iran in Syria by sending weapons to the Assad regime and launching airstrikes against rebels. Sputnik, a Russian government-run media outlet, quoted a foreign ministry source who said Russia was “willing to play, if necessary, a role as a mediator in the settlement of existing and emerging discords between these countries.” China, a major consumer of Gulf oil, is also watching the situation and has urged both sides to calm tensions.

Uncertainty in the oil market is only rising. Iran has huge oil reserves, and it will finally be able to export that oil to the world market again this year now that Western sanctions are lifting. That could mean even more oil on the world market and another year of low prices—or tensions between Iran and Saudia Arabia could send oil prices rising again. No one’s sure which way it will go.

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Everything You Need to Know About the Iran-Saudi Arabia Crisis

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