The Biden administration is reportedly preparing to ease restrictions on the sale of offensive weaponry to Saudi Arabia, reversing a decision made in 2021 in a bid to put the Yemeni crisis to bed. The reversal is aimed at pulling Riyadh into Washington\u2019s confrontation with the Houthis, but will surely fail, a Saudi foreign affairs observer says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Washington is having trouble lining up allies to join its anti-Houthi Red Sea coalition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The US-led alliance, formed to conduct a military operation dubbed Operation Prosperity Guardian in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden against Yemen\u2019s Houthi militia, currently consists of a handful of countries, including the UK, Canada, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, and Norway, plus Bahrain and the Seychelles. Some members\u2019 participation seems purely decorative, with Norway reportedly planning to send 10 officers, the Netherlands two, and Denmark just one, to assist in the mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spain has taken by far the most curious position to date, first backing an EU-level mission, but then changing its position and\u00a0apparently vetoing<\/a>\u00a0the decision without explanation. US AUKUS ally Australia has similarly\u00a0dismissed requests<\/a>\u00a0to join Operation Prosperity Guardian in any major way, limiting its involvement to 11 military personnel.<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Washington was pressed into forming its \u2018new coalition of the willing\u2019 in the wake of a string of Houthi hijackings and missile attacks on commercial cargo vessels thought to be affiliated with Israel amid Tel Aviv\u2019s ongoing war in Gaza. The attacks have caused multiple major global shipping companies to halt commercial transit through the Red Sea, with over $60 billion in cargoes already diverted to alternative routes, and losses expected to continue mounting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n US preparations for war against the Houthis mark a major reversal of policy for the current administration, which cut off US weapons support for the Saudi-led coalition\u2019s campaign against the Yemeni militia in 2021, and delisted them as a \u2018terrorist\u2019 group. This, together with a series of other factors, pushed Riyadh into a major shakeup in its foreign policy, including peace talks<\/strong> with the Houthis, the normalization of ties<\/strong> with long-time regional rival Iran, and, most recently, joining the BRICS bloc.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Washington has accompanied its Houthi-related policy reversal with plans to lift an offensive weapons sales ban targeting Riyadh, presumably in a bid to get on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman\u2019s good side and perhaps even rope him into supporting or even joining the US-led Red Sea coalition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Riyadh-based political analyst Dr. Ahmed Al Ibrahim<\/strong> doesn\u2019t expect Washington\u2019s sweet talking to have any substantive impact on Saudi Arabia\u2019s stance vis-\u00e0-vis escalating regional tensions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSaudi Arabia is doing what’s best for Saudi Arabia. It does not matter whether this is for the US administration or for anybody else. As you know, MBS is trying to zero out the whole region from any conflict, and yet we are being challenged periodically with the concerns of the militias in the region like Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis,\u201d Al Ibrahim\u00a0told Sputnik<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Characterizing the US deployment of warships to the region as \u201ca kind of hypocrisy\u201d in the wake of the Biden administration\u2019s previous attempts to starve Riyadh of military equipment to fight the Houthis, Al Ibrahim stressed that Saudi Arabia is doing its best to \u201cmove forward\u201d instead of getting bogged down in another quagmire thanks to the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cControlling the Houthis is now the US mandate. They need to deal with them,\u201d Al Ibrahim emphasized. \u201cI doubt if the United States will basically pull Saudi Arabia into the Houthi conflict. Saudi Arabia is a sovereign country and it will assess the situation. And I don\u2019t think Saudi Arabia is going to contribute to that. Having Saudi Arabia involved in that, it’s one day [until] you get blamed by actually protecting your border and your security by the Americans. And if you don’t, also, you will get blamed. So I think Saudi Arabia is not going to get dragged into any war. Saudi Arabia has an economic vision that they need to be rich, and they will choose any day, anytime peace.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n If the US fails to play its card right, the Saudi analyst predicts another power vacuum in the region like those left in Afghanistan and Iraq, and even further loss of support among Muslim countries by Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs you can see, the tone of the Middle East has risen against the United States because of the whole wrongdoing that the United States is doing to the region. But we are fed up with war,\u201d Al Ibrahim stressed.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAmerica needs to restructure itself. They need to know what their goals are and who their allies are. And they need to understand the region much better because they\u2019re losing a lot of ground to their competitors, unfortunately,\u201d the observer said, citing China and Russia as two examples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As far as Saudi Arabia\u2019s cooperation with Russia is concerned, Al Ibrahim doesn\u2019t expect any fledgling security ties between the two countries to be frayed by Washington\u2019s reversal on weapons sales. Trust with the Biden administration has been broken, and the bad taste left from the bad blood between the US president and MBS hasn\u2019t gone anywhere, in his estimation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMaybe we get delayed spare parts for some of the jets, some of the weapons that Saudi Arabia needs. But we’ll see after the election of 2024,\u201d Al Ibrahim summed up, hinting that a change of power may be necessary in Washington before Riyadh will consider restoring close ties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n