Joe Lauria talking:
Jamal Benomar, who was the previous envoy of the U.N. He had worked for two years to try to bring all the parties together and create a power-sharing deal. That was his job, and he took a neutral position. And he says that they were close to a deal and that the remaining sticking point was the role of the presidency. And at that point, as Sharif said, the Houthis had taken over Sana’a in September, but they had agreed to withdraw—according to Benomar, withdraw from the positions they held in the capital and elsewhere in the country in exchange for Hadi taking a reduced role, either as a strong vice president or as a head of a presidential council. The Saudis never had pressured Hadi to accept this, so he rejected that. And the talks went on until March 23rd, the night that the bombing began from Saudi Arabia, and that was the end of that. Now there’s this attempt in Geneva, for which there’s very little optimism, to revive the talks again.
they were going to get about 20 percent of the seats in Parliament and Cabinet. Another point that a diplomat had made to me was that this deal would have seen 30 percent women in the Cabinet and 30 percent in Parliament. And the suggestion is that the Saudis certainly did not want to see some kind of progressive democracy in their backyard. And if you look at the strategy they’ve deployed throughout the entire so-called Arab Spring, it’s been to undermine wherever some popular democracy has broken out, whether that be in Egypt, to overthrow the popularly elected president, or in Bahrain, where they certainly don’t want the majority Shia to take over and oust a Sunni king. And in Syria, they’re not backing democratic extremists who—they don’t really seem to want democracy in Syria. In Iraq, too, they backed extremists who do not want to see a democratically elected Shia government survive.
So this was perhaps—it’s believable that the Saudis have intervened more so for this reason perhaps than for the Iranian angle, which is a whole other story here, because even the United States State Department does not say that Iran has operational influence over the Houthis. This is a country awash in weapons. They don’t really need help from Iran in terms of that. A good part of the army has gone over to the Houthis. And we also have to talk about Saleh, President Saleh, who was ousted in this popular uprising, who never went away, was always in the background. He was always trying to create instability so people would turn to him as a savior. He has now joined up with the Houthis. He was the Saudis’ guy. And this is a terrible mix right now. And as far as Geneva goes, the talks that are taking place there, they’re proximity talks, so they’re not going to be speaking face to face. And the Hadi side, Saudi-backed side, says that they have to implement a Security Council resolution from a month ago which says that the Houthis have to withdraw, and he has to be restored to power, otherwise they won’t even meet with the Houthis, while the U.N. is saying there should be no conditions. So it’s unlikely that they’re going to speak face to face. The best thing that could happen is a ceasefire during Ramadan, but that’s also a long shot.
I don’t think Iran is very excited about this at all. You have to see it in the context also of the nuclear talks with Iran. Maybe the United States let them go ahead and blow off some steam there. There was also the question of, you know, the—Saudi Arabia is very angry at the United States, because they didn’t intervene in Syria when the chemical weapon issue came, and they made a deal with Russia. And they’re very angry about the Iranian talks. We have a new king, a new foreign minister, after so many years, in Saudi Arabia, and they’re taking a more independent stance. And the U.S. is hurting because their interest in—from what we know, in Yemen, is to defeat al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda is actually gaining from this Saudi intervention. The Houthis are fighting al-Qaeda; they’re the main force fighting al-Qaeda. But here are the Saudis bombing the Houthis, not touching al-Qaeda, which have become a kind of de facto ground force for the Saudis, along with some tribes in the north and those elements of the army still loyal to Hadi.
US have to keep the Saudis happy, don’t they? So, they’re complaining about too many people dying. You remember there was a—they called it off about two moths ago. Everybody’s forgot. That was the end of the bombing, a victory. And then about—a few hours. The bombing started again. And the story is, the U.S. told them they’ve had to stop because too many people were dying.
— source democracynow.org