US strategic agenda in Middle East to sow chaos, war: Analyst

Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in Yemen is part of the broad US geopolitical and strategic agenda for the Middle East to sow chaos and conflicts in the region, an American geopolitical analyst says.

The Saudi regime desperately needs the support of neoconservatives in Washington to continue its “disastrous” and “criminal” war against Yemen, said Eric Draitser, the founder of Stopimperialism.org.

Riyadh is “pandering to the neocons in Washington, desperately trying to shore up political support for both a militarily and politically failing war on Yemen,” Draitser said during an interview with Press TV on Tuesday.

“This devastating conflict [that] the Saudis have murderously unleashed on the people of Yemen… is essentially internationally and almost unanimously recognized as a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions,” he added.

“All of this is part of the broad US geopolitical and strategic agenda for the region,” he added. “The US desperately needs this to continue the chaos, whether it’s in the form of a war, whether it’s in the form of increased terrorism.”

On Monday, a top Saudi Arabian military official tried to win Washington support for the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen, rejecting the increasingly vocal criticism of the war’s humanitarian toll.

Brigadier General Ahmad Asiri, spokesman for the Saudi military, made the comments via Skype to a small audience at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington, DC-based think tank.

Yemen has been under airstrikes by Saudi Arabia since March 26 last year. The Saudi strikes have been meant to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement and bring fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, back to power.

The Obama administration has approved the sharing of US targeting intelligence, aerial refueling capabilities and new weapons systems with Saudi Arabia since the regime launched the war.

Despite this military support, the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia has become progressively worse amid Riyadh’s growing international isolation and increasing domestic instability, experts say.

“We’ve seen a long deterioration in the US-Saudi relationship, and it started well before the Obama Administration,” a former US ambassador to Riyadh, Charles W. Freeman Jr., told the Los Angeles Times last month.