Joe Biden will end military support for the war in Yemen. MSNBC. The US has not played a direct role in the war but has supported Yemen's government and their ally, Saudi Arabia in their efforts to defeat Iran's proxy army, the Houthis. The support will end and Biden will also cancel relevant arms sales, most notably precision guided weapons. Biden announced new diplomatic efforts to end the fighting. However, actions will still be taken against al-Qaeda's affiliate in the region, AQAP.
My Comment:
Always trust in Democrats to make a bad situation worse. This move is going to have major consequences in the region and could even lead to a larger war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. It's a terrible decision and one that the country will likely regret.
What the article fails to mention is how big of a threat the Houthi rebels actually are to Saudi Arabia. They are not just some militia, they have been supplied by Iran with extremely modern weapons. After all, what rebel group do you know of that regularly launches ballistic missiles? They have launched massive drone strikes against Saudi Arabia and done a lot of damage.
Stopping the sale of guided missiles is just asinine. The best case scenario is that the Saudis now have to rely on "dumb" munitions instead. This will, of course, lead to many more civilian casualties as instead of surgically striking a single house they will likely be destroying an entire block with regular bombs. More likely though they will buy from foreign sources like Russia, which means American companies lose out on money.
About the only good thing in this announcement is that we are still going to target AQAP. That particular terror group is one of the more powerful and dangerous ones and they have funded major terror attacks abroad, most notably the Charlie Hebdo attacks in France. Letting them off the hook would be an act of insanity given how big of a threat they are.
I do worry that this, along with Biden's reversal of the general peace movement in the Middle East will lead to war. After all, we have essentially abandoned the Saudis to their fate here. Sure, we shouldn't be fighting their wars for them but they are an ally against Iran and we appear to be cutting them loose. Our support was limited in the first place and was mostly a message to the Saudis saying "yep, we are on your side against the Iranians". And now that is gone.
With the Saudi's and other gulf states feeling isolated and it being fairly obvious that Biden will be making overtures to Iran it seems likely that the new Israeli-Arab alliance could be tested soon. The Trump administration was doing a good job getting all of these players together to face the Iranian threat. I would not be surprised at all if there is a shooting war over Iran's nuclear program and general hostility.
What would have been my policy on Yemen? Status quo ante. No need to deploy combat troops or directly support the Saudis but we certainly could sell them arms and give them intel. Doing so keeps them happy, makes Iran mad and keeps anyone from doing anything too stupid. With that restraint out of the way I fear that Saudi Arabia might end up doing something drastic.
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