Saudis ’Let Down’ By US’ Declining Support for Yemen War

By Staff, Agencies

A Saudi royal complained about the United States' lack of commitment to defending the kingdom from retaliatory attacks by Yemen's Ansarullah movement, even as Riyadh continues to violate a recent ceasefire deal.

Prince Turki al-Faisal, who is also a former Saudi intelligence chief, expressed disappointment about Washington's declining support for Saudi Arabia, and said Riyadh feels "let down" by the United States in tackling security threats to the kingdom by the Yemeni resistance movement.

"Saudis consider the relationship as being strategic, but feel as being let down at a time when we thought that America and Saudi Arabia should be together in facing what we would consider to be a joint, not just irritant, but danger to the stability and security of the area," the prince said in a video interview with Saudi newspaper Arab News published on Monday.

"We've had our ups and downs over the years, and perhaps at this time it's one of the downs, particularly since the president of the United States in his election campaign said that he will make Saudi Arabia a pariah and of course he went on to practice what he preached," Faisal added.

Ties between Washington and Riyadh have been shaky after US President Joe Biden took office and since the 2018 murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of Saudi agents.

Shortly after taking office last year, the US president declared that he would end "American support for offensive operations in the war.” A year into his presidency, however, the White House keeps approving weapons sales to the Riyadh regime.

Hundreds of Americans have on several occasions held demonstrations in major cities to denounce the bloody Saudi-led war on Yemen, urging Congress to support a proposal that would end the “unconstitutional” US involvement in the aggression.

Saudi Arabia launched the devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in collaboration with a number of its allies and with arms and logistics support from the US and several Western states. The objective was to bring back to power a Riyadh-friendly regime and crush the popular Ansarullah resistance movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of an effective government in Yemen.

Shortly after the onset of the war, the regime in Riyadh also triggered a tight blockade on Yemen, where the population is in dire need of basic supplies such as food and medicine.

The Saudi-led war has stopped well short of all of its goals, despite killing hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and turning the entire country into the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

A ceasefire agreement between the Saudi Arabia-led coalition that has been invading and occupying the war-ravaged country since 2015 and Yemen’s popular Ansarullah resistance movement was mediated by the United Nations on April 2, but Riyadh has on multiple occasions violated the truce by bombing civilian areas across the impoverished country.