Saudi Arabia feels no pressure to stop Yemen bombing: Pundit

Press TV has conducted an interview with Jim W. Dean, managing editor of the Veterans Today from Atlanta, about dozens of airstrikes by Saudi Arabia hours before the UN-brokered ceasefire takes effect.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Why is that seems like every ceasefire that they’ve tried to instill or put in place or implement in Yemen hasn’t been held up by the Saudis? This isn’t first time we’ve heard reports such as this.

Dean: Well, it’s just like the broken record that keeps playing the same thing over and over again. The problem, I guess, you would say others no penalties whatsoever to the Saudis not following up on any ceasefire. Who’s going to do anything about it? UN is not going to do anything about it, the mass media is not going to go after them, they don’t lose anything, they don’t post any bonds, they’re not getting any bad press.

So, they agreed with ceasefire, they enjoyed the press for a couple of days and then everything continues on. So, what we’re seeing here still is a war of attrition. The only thing they had been worried about is too many deaths of Saudi troops. And we saw many months ago the big push to switch over to mercenaries and they don’t really care how many of them get killed.

So, I’m concerned about this that the amount of money that it costs doesn’t hurt them and Saudi Arabia is using this for their army to get some practice, because it’s had very very poor results. So, I think they are actually seeing that they’re using the Yemen war is a way to kind of beef up their army.

Press TV: Why don’t we see more urgency by Western government Saudi allies to put pressure on Riyadh, I mean, there’ve been documents somewhat between 60 to 80 percent of children are starving. Let’s just say well over half of the kids in the country are malnourished as of now. I mean over 4000 women and children have succumbed to injuries or being killed by bombardments or starvation whatever humanitarian crisis or violence on the ground there, but yet it’s all fallen on deaf ears... Western media well-documented, there’s no doubt as so what’s going on there. Why hasn’t the US put any pressure on Riyadh or its Western allies for that matter?

Dean: They haven’t done it, because nobody cares. Most of the public doesn’t even know where Yemen is? They don’t really care. They don’t really see any interest going on there. And then also some of the stories that are going on the big stories Syria is taking up a lot of the news and the average public just can follow all of these conflicts and everybody knows they see Saudi Arabia’s involved, the Arab League is completely involved.

And also all of the big allies, everybody who’s selling the big weapons contracts to Saudi Arabia are going to do anything. So, everybody just figures, it’s none of our business. It’s between the Yemenis and the Saudis to work it out. And we as outsiders, there’s really no effect that we can have on it. It’s a really fatalistic attitude.

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