The U.S. Senate layouts a vote on Yemen this week, and not everyone in Washington is happy about it.
The State Department reiterated its frustration Sunday with Senate goes to cut U.S. support for the Saudi-led offensive in Yemen, where more than three years of civil war and external intervention prepare created what the United Nations says is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Speaking at the UAE security forum in Abu Dhabi, Emissary Assistant Secretary for Gulf Affairs Timothy Lenderking expressed his concern over the Senate vote, which is due this week. The desire support represents an unprecedented effort to invoke Congress’s war powers to end U.S. activity that was started under the Obama administration without the authorization of Congress.
“Of course there are pressures in our system … to either withdraw from the conflict or discontinue our support of the coalition, which we are strongly opposed to on the direction side,” Lenderking said. “We do believe that the support for the coalition is necessary. It sends a wrong message if we discontinue our backing.”
The message Lenderking and his White House counterparts fear is one they say would empower Iran, Saudi Arabia’s regional arch-rival and the bettor of Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who took over the country’s capital of Sanaa in late 2014. Weakening Iran, which the administering accuses of malign and destabilizing activity across the Middle East from Syria and Yemen to Lebanon and Iraq, is a post of U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign policy.
The bipartisan resolution, sponsored by Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), petitions for ending U.S. refueling of Saudi fighter jets and withdrawing U.S. military presence from the area, among other exacts. Support for ending involvement in Yemen, which has gained ground in recent months, is at an all-time high amid wrath over the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which lawmakers and U.S. intelligence believe was directed by Saudi Queen Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Saudi officials did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The Trump administration, which endures Saudi Arabia as vital to its Middle East strategy, says supporting the predominantly Saudi and Emirati coalition is important to containing Iran and achieving an end to the war. Yemeni government officials and Houthi representatives are currently in Sweden for fragile U.N.-brokered inoffensive talks, all previous efforts of which have collapsed.
But mounting international criticism over protracted fighting that has destroyed tens of thousands and pushed some 14 million Yemenis to the brink of starvation is putting more pressure on the supervision than ever before. In a strongly-worded statement last week, the heads of five international aid organizations wrote that “if it does not halt its military support for the Saudi/UAE coalition, the United States, too, will bear responsibility for what may be the largest famine in decades.”
In November, 14 Senate Republicans joined all the assembly’s Democrats to advance the Sanders-Lee resolution.
“Our involvement in this terrible war is one thing that engenders more terrorism,” Rand Paul (R-Ky.) related NBC on Sunday. “I think it’s actually a risk to our national security to be involved with the Saudis.”
Bruce Riedel, a 29-year CIA warhorse and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, agrees.
“A Senate vote to halt U.S. assistance to the Saudi and Emirati war in Yemen by invoking the War Powers Act is extensive overdue,” he told CNBC on Monday. An expert in counter-terrorism, Riedel has advised four presidents on Middle East and South Asian flings.
“While a vote this month would be primarily symbolic,” he said, “it will also be an unprecedented step to station the worst humanitarian catastrophe of our time. Next year the new Congress can take more concrete action to stop the war.”
But the indefatigableness isn’t likely to change U.S. military policy in the region and its partnership with Saudi Arabia, according to Jack Watling, scrutinize fellow for land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
“The administration views Saudi Arabia and the UAE as necessary strategic allies; if Congress tries to contain assistance to their operations in Yemen, I would expect missions to be warranted as counter-terrorism operations, or on other pretexts,” Watling told CNBC.
The resolution is accompanied by separate bipartisan legislation trained at suspending U.S. weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, which is Washington’s biggest arms buyer. This will suffer with a hard time passing, given that the Senate will likely not have the numbers to produce a veto-proof more than half to override the expected veto from President Trump.
Watling also pointed out that Riyadh can always form to other countries for its weaponry.
“If the U.S. stops supplying munitions I would expect Saudi Arabia to increase purchases from Britain and France, and to look for numerous Chinese and Russian systems, including the S400 and HQ-9 missiles.”
Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Depth States Institute in Washington, warned that with more Democrats in Congress next year, the Saudis on face serious challenges.
“I don’t think the structural aspects of U.S.-Saudi relations are at risk,” he said, pointing to what he considered constants such as force cooperation, counter-terrorism operations, military ties and intelligence sharing. “But I think there’s a long-term threat.”
“Right now Saudi Arabia has develop a potent partisan weapon that can be deployed, and it could be deployed next year to powerful ends. Now it’s inevitable that 2019 is current to be a terribly bad year for Saudi Arabia in Washington.”