Saudi Arabia is bogged down in Yemen as it has failed to achieve any of the objectives of the devastating war it has launched against the Arabian Peninsula country, Sana’a’s ambassador to Tehran tells Press TV.
In an exclusive interview with Press TV on Wednesday, Ibrahim Mohammad al-Dailami said that at the onset of the war five years ago, Saudis were pursuing several domestic and regional goals.
He said that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman — also known as MbS and seen as the mastermind behind the military campaign against Yemen —was initially after “tuning his country into a regional entity to counter other regional entities and become the main agent for the American project in the region.”
“This would lead to forging ties with the Zionist enemy at all levels. However, his stumbling in Yemen resulted in a real delay for the Saudis to become a regional power and agent for the American-Zionist project in the area,” he said.
“Saudis wanted to achieve quick victory in a matter of weeks or one to two months. However after five years, Saudi Arabia is drowning in Yemen,” he said.
The Yemeni envoy further said that the kingdom has failed to achieve its key objective of “dividing Yemen and stirring up sedition among its people,” adding “the Yemeni nation continues to confront this aggression.”
He said that the US and its close allies — Britain and Israel in particular — are complicit in the atrocities the Riyadh regime has been committing in Yemen, citing their provision of arms, logistics, and intelligence to the Saudi-led coalition waging war on Yemen.
Dailami described the humanitarian situation in Yemen as “severe”, calling on all the freedom-seeking people “to raise their voices to hold the Saudis and their backers, including the Emiratis, the Americans, the Zionists and the British, accountable.”
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, back to power and crushing Ansarullah.
A number of Western countries, the US, France and Britain in particular, are also accused of being complicit in the ongoing aggression as they supply the Riyadh regime with advanced weapons and military equipment as well as logistical and intelligence assistance.
The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the Saudi-led war has claimed the lives of over 60,000 Yemenis since January 2016.
The war has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories. The UN says over 24 million Yemenis are in dire need of humanitarian aid, including 10 million suffering from extreme levels of hunger.
