Saudi Arabia and its allies are desperate to cease fire in Yemen, but they want a major victory to continue their interfering role in talks over the fate of the country before holding fire; otherwise, they will earn nothing, but utmost humiliation after years of bombing a poor, defenseless nation. It’s now several months they have come to realize that they have lost the costly war and wish for a way out without being so much humiliated.
The bankrupt regime also needs to shrink its budget deficit with spending cuts and a drive to raise revenues from sources other than oil. To do so, a major requirement is ending the costly and failed war on Yemen.
After all, the Saudis need more American bombs and missiles, and it costs a silly mount of cash to get them. At the penniless department of the Pentagon there are no freebies for the regime changers in the Middle East. They have to pay upfront.
Just for the record, according to the US State Department, a single Tomahawk or Hellfire missile strike against the civilian targets in Yemen – involving F-15s, F-16s or F-22s and drones – costs up to $500,000. The Saudis have been “proudly” using the same type of missiles against the poorest country in the Middle East for over three years now, and the financial ramifications have been devastating for their accountants in Riyadh.
It’s all the reason why the Saudis, proxy forces, and regional vassals are so desperate to begin some so-called peace talks and end the costly war on the people of Yemen at the earliest. True, they have in the meantime been bombing the country. But that’s all really. The Saudis want to end the war before the war ends them! Their American allies also know that they can’t win it anyhow.
The Saudis and their allies know that they will be suffering if Riyadh makes the choice to continue the costly “proxy war”. Moreover, the political class in Riyadh is not willing to pay more for the war on Yemen – they have no money and they are beaten and bankrupt.
As it all stands, in their foolish agenda for regime change in Sana’a, the House of Saud got nothing. America was far bigger and far richer than Saudi Arabia, yet still got defeated and went bankrupt on the back of two illegal wars. The war on Yemen was not any different.
The “proxy war” of exorbitant air raids, precision-guided bombs, laser spotters, Tomahawk and Hellfire missiles – under the pretext of fighting alleged “Iranian-backed Houthis” – failed to succeed. It also ended with an insolvent Saudi Arabia. After all, Riyadh’s very first and lethal mistake was calling a nation the agents of another country.
At the same time, the war in Yemen exposed the tenuous nature of Saudi Arabia’s relationships with its principal Muslim allies. The most important of them, Pakistan, surprisingly refused to send its army to assist the kingdom.
The Sisi government in Egypt — in which Riyadh had invested many billions of dollars and which was considered the kingdom’s “strategic depth” — also reportedly refused to send large numbers of ground troops to participate in the fighting. Instead, Cairo sent a small contingent of several hundred soldiers and three to four ships to assist Riyadh. And in some instances, even those countries that agreed to participate in the Saudi-led campaign developed conflicts of interest with Riyadh over the course of the fighting; for example, the Saudis and the Emiratis are backing forces that are at odds over the future of Yemen and this created friction that has at times erupted into violence between local actors.
Any doubters should take a look at the Saudi budget plan for this year, which is also making a return back to global credit markets after a 25-year hiatus. The cash-strapped regime is about to secure a five-year $10-billion loan from international banks! Digits and numbers show that Saudi Arabia will definitely go completely bankrupt by 2020 if it doesn’t stop its military adventurism in the region now. Riyadh is desparate to find a way out of Yemen, but the problem is that they don’t have the tact and diplomacy, let alone strategic leadership.
Source: Fars News Agency