Arab Analyst: S. Arabia to Face More Powerful Players in Syria than Yemen

“Saudi Arabia has started airstrikes and ground assaults against Yemen since 11 months ago; Yemen is among the poorest countries and the Houthis and Abdullah Saleh’s army are fighting against Riyadh in the war and they have much smaller number of weapons compared to Saudi Arabia, but Riyadh has failed to end the war in its favor, while its economic power has also decreased due to the reduction in oil prices which doesn’t allow the country to enter another war against those who have more power and weapons,” Atwan wrote in an editorial for the Kuwaiti newspaper on Saturday.

Noting that Saudi Arabia’s dispatch of forces to Syria isn’t aimed at fight against the ISIL terrorists, he said deployment of forces is just a pretext to prevent the Syrian army from retaking Allepo’s control and to boost the morale of the terrorists whose situation is deteriorating every day.

On Thursday, the Saudi Defense Ministry said it stood ready to deploy ground troops to Syria to allegedly aid the US-led anti-ISIL, also known as Daesh, coalition.

Riyadh has been a member of the US-led coalition that has been launching airstrikes against Daesh in Syria since September 2014, without the permission of Damascus or the United Nations. In December 2015, Saudi Arabia started its own Muslim 34-nation coalition to allegedly fight Islamic extremism.

Daesh or ISIL/ISIS is a Wahhabi group mentored by Saudi Arabia and has been blacklisted as a terrorist group everywhere in the world, including the United States and Russia, but Saudi Arabia.

Both Tehran and Moscow have issued stern warnings to Riyadh, stressing that the Saudi intruders, who in fact intend to rescue the terrorists that are sustaining heavy defeats these days, will be crushed in Syria.

Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari said Saudi Arabia doesn’t have the guts to send its armed forces to Syria.

“They claim they will send troops (to Syria) but I don’t think they will dare do so. They have a classic army and history tells us such armies stand no chance in fighting irregular resistance forces,” Jafari told reporters in Tehran on Saturday.

“This will be like a coup de grâce for them. Apparently, they see no other way but this, and if this is the case, then their fate is sealed,” he added.

Jafari, said this is just cheap talks, but Iran welcomes the Saudi decision if they decide to walk on this path.