The US is sending warships to Yemen supposedly to head off Iranian weapons shipments to the Houthis who have overthrown the Yemeni government. Never mind that the US has not found Iranian shipments. What is really behind this US escalation?
The US is sending warships to Yemen supposedly to head off Iranian weapons shipments to the Houthis who have overthrown the Yemeni government. Never mind that the US has not found Iranian shipments. What is really behind this US escalation?
The US is sending warships to Yemen supposedly to head off Iranian weapons shipments to the Houthis who have overthrown the Yemeni government. Never mind that the US has not found Iranian shipments. What is really behind this US escalation?
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
With me today is Daniel McAdams, who is the Executive Director of the Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
He is also a co-host of this program.
Daniel, welcome again to our program here today.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
Good.
I would like to visit with you a little bit and talk about what's going on in Yemen.
As you know, we've spent a lot of time on this, especially in the last several months.
And even in the past, we talked about this even when I was still in Congress.
But it seems like the problems are building up, and I have made the statement I think it is a very, very dangerous spot in the world.
Not because there's great danger to us, but it's our involvement that seems to be a danger to us and to world peace.
But the big announcement now is finally getting more national attention in the ordinary media, even though I think their interpretation is terrible.
But there's a big navy buildup.
We're sending probably up to nine major vessels, including an aircraft carrier.
But before we get into the details on this, have you thought anything about why Obama would be doing this?
Because, you know, we talked about how he sends us different signals.
Want to do something good here, something bad here, and we can't quite, you know, predict.
But what do you think his reason is for looking like he's pretty tough and has to support the Sharia government of Saudi Arabia all of a sudden?
Exactly.
Well, as you know, the Saudis have been bombing Yemen for several weeks now.
They've killed thousands of people, probably a thousand civilians.
So it's been a very brutal bombing of one of the poorest countries on earth.
But I think you're right, there is a political component here.
Why would the U.S. back the Saudi bombing of Yemen where there's really no interest to the U.S.?
But I think it's all about Iran if you take a good look at the White House's rhetoric.
They keep accusing Iran of supplying weapons to the Houthis who are Yemeni citizens while the U.S. is supplying weapons to the Saudi Arabians who are bombing another country.
But I think this all has to do with the Iran deal.
The president needs to reassure his allies, Saudi Arabia, that the U.S. is still going to be tough with Iran, even if we have a deal.
And plus he has to blunt a lot of criticism, specifically from Republicans in the U.S., that, hey, just because it reached a nuclear deal with Iran doesn't mean we're going to stop being aggressive toward this country.
So that's why I think you're hearing all this rhetoric about Iranian arms.
Well, you know, I see this as escalation, and it's very dangerous.
Our ships are going in there.
There is a blockade.
They admit they're blockading.
The Yemeni people depend 90% on imports.
They're not a rich country, so they have to import their food.
This blockade is stopping the food from coming in.
Ships are afraid they won't get paid.
They're afraid they're going to be stopped.
And, you know, they haven't found any weapons yet.
That is a big thing.
And yet the papers and the TVs automatically says the weapons, the weapons, the weapons, and we have to stop the weapons come in.
And I think back since it was the year I was drafted in the military, when they said that we had to have a military build-up for Cuba, we saw the weapons and we saw what was going on there.
But don't you think if they had any concrete evidence of Iran sending in weapons, they would produce some of these to convince the people that there is indeed a big threat?
Well, it's an old story by now.
You know, look at the Iraq war.
We were told there were weapons, you know, just in Ukraine.
We're told that there's been a Russian invasion.
We're told, I think, 20 or 30 times that the Russians have invaded, yet there's no evidence of this invasion.
And now it's the same thing with Iran.
There are weapons coming in.
And okay, if that were true, that could be an escalation.
But if you look at it just in terms of international law, the Houthis are Yemeni citizens.
They are being attacked by a foreign power.
Why is it not legitimate for them to have arms to defend themselves against an attacking foreign power?
You talk about double standards.
You know, and I try to get people to think in terms of what would we do if we were treated this way.
Let's say the power shifts in the world someday, which is always a possibility.
What happens if China becomes a superpower and Russia and this sort of thing?
And all of a sudden they say, well, who's the arms dealer?
Of course, we're the biggest arms dealer in the world.
We can't even prove that they're sending arms in there.
And yet we're the biggest ones in the world and that we assume that we have this authority.
So I would say, do we have the illegal authority?
I don't believe we have the moral authority.
I think it's very dangerous.
And once again, who suffers the most?
It's really innocent citizens, civilians, the children.
And this is exactly what happened in Iraq.
Think of how many died there and how many children actually died with the blockade and the inability to get food and medications.
Well, you know, the White House is, of course, neither of us or anyone in the right mind wants to see an escalation of violence there.
I think that's absolutely true.
But the White House is particularly duplicitous when it comes to this because listen to what Josh Ernest, who's a White House spokesman, said.
He's condemning the Iranians for supplying weapons, which has not, as you point out, has not been found.
The U.S. boarded one Panamanian ship that it was certain had Iranian weapons.
It had nothing on it.
So they've not found a single weapon.
But he condemns, nevertheless, the White House spokesman condemns the Iranians supplying weapons because that support will only contribute to greater violence.
So it's basically, so one side has to remain unarmed so they can be easily shot by the other side.
That reduces violence.
Well, you know, I don't think we're in there because there is a military plan for us to have a military confrontation with Iran.
Even though I think there are a few people of influence that wouldn't mind seeing that happening because they would just assume, you know, start bombing Iran and this might move us in that direction.
But I do not believe, and maybe I'm being naive, that that is the policy of our current president.
Matter of fact, I sort of want to give him a pass and think that he's more likely, sincerely in favor of trying to become more neutral with Iran as well as with Cuba, and that would be good.
But the real danger here are the unexpected consequences of that, the accidents that can happen.
Somebody shoots a missile, and the other thing is who gets blamed for an accident.
But what about a false flag?
And sometimes false flags aren't actually the policy of the government.
If there's something done where it looks like the Iranians did something, it might be done by somebody on our side, but it might not be endorsed by our military.
So it's not unusual for these things to get out of hand.
Absolutely.
Well, we saw just recently, there was a false flag kidnapping of an NBC news reporter in Syria, if you remember.
And all the time it was blamed on Assad.
Assad kidnapped him, and the Free Syrian Army released him.
Well, the whole thing was a false flag.
The Free Syrian Army had kidnapped him, and NBC went with this story even though they knew it was not true.
But you know, another thing that I wanted to point out that's talk about unintended consequences, at least I hope they're unintended consequences.
But this is an article by Bloomberg.
So it's a mainstream publication.
It talks about the enormous benefits to al-Qaeda of the Saudi Arabian attack on Yemen.
They say that the Saudi al-Qaeda's branch in Yemen is gaining from the conflict.
They seized control of an airport and an oil export terminal.
And they've freed hundreds of their fighters from prison.
They've robbed millions of dollars from the banks, and the Houthis who are being bombed, even according to Bloomberg, quote, have been fighting against al-Qaeda for years.
Do you think somebody will write a book someday on how our policies actually was on the side of al-Qaeda?
Maybe, obviously, not on purpose, but inadvertently.
And also, you know, there's a lot of attacks against Iran for a long time, all the way back to 1953.
We just don't like those people.
But what if it turns out that, you know, the policies backfired on us there and actually made them closer allies with Iraq?
You know, you were talking about the false flags a minute ago and the one that occurred.
But what about in Syria also?
Wasn't it more or less considered a false flag on this gas that Assad was supposed to have used?
And it was probably used by one of the rebel groups.
Yeah, there have been two separate ones.
One actually, even last month, that a group was using to show that Assad was using gas again.
Of course, once again, the evidence is extremely dubious.
The organization that made the claims actually had been founded by the U.S. government, and they pretend to be a Syrian rights group.
But false flags are very, very effective.
They go through history.
Well, I think it's such a shame because I see answers that can be found in non-intervention and not picking sides.
You know, we can try to point out the mistakes that we're making because we have more responsibility for our own government's policies.
At the same time, we don't have to be on one side or the other.
I think that's the real benefit of a non-interventionist foreign policy.
These are civil wars going on.
Matter of fact, Yemen, if nobody was involved, just like in Ukraine, maybe they would divide their country in a friendly sort of way and have two divisions.
They could do this.
But once you get Saudi involved and then you get the Iranians involved, you get the U.S. government involved and you get NATO involved and the United Nations involved, and then you end up with this mess.
So I would still argue the case that it would be best for our national security and our pocketbooks as well.
Anyway, I would like to thank everybody for tuning in to the Liberty Report.