{"id":195484,"date":"2019-09-28T06:09:41","date_gmt":"2019-09-28T06:09:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=195484"},"modified":"2019-10-02T05:51:11","modified_gmt":"2019-10-02T05:51:11","slug":"u-s-military-officials-warned-saudi-arabia-would-fail-in-yemen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=195484","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Military Officials Warned Saudi Arabia Would Fail in Yemen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Perry \u2013 The American Conservative Sept 25, 2019<\/strong><\/h1>\n

While it\u2019s seems axiomatic that most Americans suffer from historical amnesia, that\u2019s not necessarily true for the U.S. military. And as America and Iran were sprinting towards a military confrontation last week, a recently retired senior U.S. military officer expounded on what he called \u201cthe bumbling, incompetent and feckless stupidity of it all.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The target of the officer\u2019s ire was not Donald Trump (whom he admires) or Mike Pompeo (who he doesn\u2019t), but Saudi Arabia\u2019s March 2015 decision to go to war against the Iranian-allied Houthi tribal movement in Yemen \u2014\u201cwhich is,\u201d he argues, \u201chow all of this nonsense got started in the first place.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He explained: \u201cWe didn\u2019t see the [Saudi] invasion [of Yemen] coming and we were shocked when it happened. But we were pretty blunt. We told them, \u2018you can\u2019t win and you\u2019ll bankrupt your country. It\u2019ll be a quagmire.\u2019 And we were right.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This officer\u2019s \u201cwe-told-ya-so\u201d narrative, as it turns out, is accurate. Saudi Arabia\u2019s invasion of Yemen to destroy the Houthi rebellion (and reinstate the government of Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi) not only surprised the Obama administration, it was met with nearly open disdain by the U.S. military<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. Key senior officers of the U.S. Special Operations Command viewed the Houthis as a robust counter to al-Qaeda\u2019s strength in Yemen and even argued that America take steps to support them.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Houthis were only nominally Iran\u2019s surrogates,\u201d a military officer told me at the time, \u201cbut they were also our quiet partners against al-Qaeda.\u201d Yet back in 2015, because of the Saudi invasion (with support from nine other Arab states), the possibility that the Pentagon could count on Houthi backing was not only off the table, senior Pentagon officials predicted that the tribe would strengthen its ties with their Shia co-religionists in Iran\u2014something that, prior to the Saudi invasion, it hadn\u2019t wanted to do. That\u2019s why key segments of the U.S. military thought the Saudi invasion was a mistake.<\/span><\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not how Senator John McCain saw it. McCain defended the Saudi invasion, linked it to Barack Obama\u2019s decision to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran, and said there was good reason that the Saudis had kept their planned intervention a secret. \u201cThese countries, led by Saudi Arabia, did not notify us nor seek our coordination or our assistance in this effort, because they believe we are siding with Iran,\u201d McCain, who succumbed to cancer in 2018, said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Senior U.S. military officers scoffed at this, even as, given McCain\u2019s stature as the arbiter of all-things-military, they kept their views private. \u201cThe reason the Saudis didn\u2019t inform us of their plans,\u201d a U.S. Central Command officer told me at the time, \u201cis because they knew we would have told them exactly what we think\u2014that it was a bad idea.\u201d Yemen expert Michael Horton, whose intimate knowledge of the conflict is informed by visits to the region, echoed these views while channeling the U.S. military\u2019s skepticism<\/strong><\/span><\/a> about Saudi Arabian military competence: \u201cFrankly, they cannot begin to manage this,\u201d he told me soon after the Saudi intervention. \u201cThey have all the toys, but few people who know how to manage them. Their NCO and officer corps are largely untested, and their enlisted men are drawn from the lowest rungs of Saudi society. If they get bogged down in Yemen, I wonder about the loyalty of many of their soldiers and NCOs.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Saudi-led intervention began well enough, with a relentless air campaign and naval blockade that initially eroded Houthi strength. And despite its skepticism, the U.S. military turned on a dime, providing the Saudi-led coalition with intelligence and logistical support and advising senior officers of the United Arab Emirates, which commanded most of the anti-Houthi ground forces. But over the course of the next three years, the intervention bogged down<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. The blockade triggered a famine that affected millions of Yemenis, the UAE\u2019s mercenary force proved no match for the better-led Houthis, rebel militias began to lob scud missiles into Saudi Arabia\u2019s oil fields, Riyadh\u2019s allies began to peel away from the coalition (the UAE exited Yemen last July), the UAE-led mercenary army suffered a series of devastating defeats along the Saudi border, and, most crucially, the Houthis strengthened their ties with Tehran\u2014all of which Pentagon officials had predicted back in 2015.<\/span><\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia\u2019s troubles in Yemen rang alarm bells in Washington. Within months of taking office, Donald Trump\u2019s national security team began meeting with Middle East experts to explore ways to ease the Saudis out of their Yemen pratfall. The under-the-radar meetings, conducted by national security adviser H.R. McMaster and his staff, were accompanied by mounting intelligence reports that Saudi Arabia\u2019s intervention was throwing into doubt the long-term stability of the Saudi government. In fact, officials inside the royal family were using the Yemen crisis to mount a whisper campaign to undermine Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the wake of these White House consultations, a senior Pentagon official told me, the Trump administration reached two conclusions\u2014that \u201call is not well in the House of Saud,\u201d and that the U.S. should open talks with the Houthis to end the war. In September, as a part of this effort, the State Department dispatched David Schenker<\/a><\/strong><\/span> to Riyadh to pressure the Saudis to join prospective U.S.-Houthi talks hosted by Oman.<\/span><\/p>\n

This history provides context for the September 14 missile and drone strikes on a major oil processing facility inside Saudi Arabia. The U.S. intelligence community has since concluded that the attack, launched from western Iran, accounted for nearly 20 strikes that destroyed four oil tanks and disabled sophisticated oil pumping equipment. While the damage only temporarily curtailed world oil supplies, it sent shudders through global oil markets\u2014and the White House.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Trump administration only briefly considered a military response, before dispatching Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Riyadh and then announcing the deployment of additional U.S. ground forces to help the Saudis improve their air defenses\u2014a strategy that a senior Pentagon civilian described as \u201ctalking big and carrying a swagger stick.\u201d In fact, the bluff and bluster belied the reality of what is actually happening in the region, this same Pentagon civilian told me. \u201cWe\u2019re not the only ones moving pieces on the board,\u201d he said. \u201cOver the last two years, the Iranians have shown that they can hit us and our allies from all kinds of places.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

According to this official, the U.S. and Iran have been engaged in \u201ca kind of low intensity proxy war\u201d in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and the waters of the Persian Gulf since May 2018, when Washington withdrew from the U.S.-Iran Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. By one count, the tit-for-tat conflict (\u201can escalatory salvo in an expanding regional power struggle,\u201d as one report phrased it), has included the bombing of oil tankers, drone strikes on key ports, missile strikes on Riyadh, cross border operations targeting Saudi soldiers, and a drone offensive on the Golan Heights.<\/span><\/p>\n

The attacks have run parallel to Iran\u2019s decision to upgrade and expand its support for Iranian proxies in the region<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, which, in turn, sparked the scrambling of Israeli jets to bomb suspected Iranian bases in Syria, Lebanon, and (most recently) Iraq. While the tit-for-tat blows have not yet put the U.S. and Iran into a direct confrontation, both nations are climbing the escalatory ladder towards war. Tehran\u2019s new calculus (\u201cexpanding the battlefield,\u201d as the senior Pentagon civilian phrased it) means that any U.S. strike against Iran itself would have to take into account multiple responses that would pit Iran and its allies (including Hezbollah) against the U.S. and its allies (including Israel).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou know that popular map that you see on Twitter that shows that Iran is surrounded by U.S. bases?\u201d the Pentagon civilian asks rhetorically. \u201cWell, guess what? The Iranians have now surrounded Saudi Arabia. And so while we\u2019ve ratcheted up the economic pressure, they\u2019ve decided to do the same<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. Last week\u2019s message was loud and clear\u2014if we can\u2019t market our oil, we\u2019re going to make damn sure you can\u2019t market yours.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Left unsaid, but implied in this assessment, is what the official was careful not<\/em> to say: that despite all of America\u2019s saber rattling and Mike Pompeo\u2019s bluster, the U.S. is playing an increasingly weak military hand\u2014and it\u2019s only getting weaker.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mark Perry is a contributing editor at <\/em>The American Conservative and the author of <\/em>The Pentagon\u2019s Wars<\/strong><\/span>.<\/a> He tweets <\/em>@markperrydc<\/em><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One explained: \u201cWe didn\u2019t see the [Saudi] invasion [of Yemen] coming and we were shocked when it happened. But we were pretty blunt. We told them, \u2018you can\u2019t win and you\u2019ll bankrupt your country. It\u2019ll be a quagmire.\u2019 And we were right.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-Current_Affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195484"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":195486,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195484\/revisions\/195486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}