Speaking today in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Secretary of State John Kerry endorsed the Saudi government’s decision to attack Yemen in March of last year, starting a war which has raged ever since and killed thousands of civilians.
Kerry claimed the decision for war was made in part to target “al-Qaeda operatives,” even though in reality the Saudis left the local al-Qaeda affiliate, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), totally untouched for nine months, and allowed them to occupy the major city of Mukallah early in the war, where they’ve remained ever since.
Kerry followed on these comments with complaints about Iranian “interference” in Yemen. Though the Saudi war is against a Shi’ite faction in Yemen, the group has few historic ties to Iran, and despite Saudi claims they’ve provided little evidence of Iran being even tangentially involved.
On Saturday, the White House issued a statement of “concern” about the massive civilian death toll in Yemen, but conspicuously did not mention Saudi Arabia, who has killed the vast majority of them, and simply urged all sides to exercise “restraint.”
