By Hassan Hanizadeh
Many political analysts have described the Pakistani government’s rejection of a call by Riyadh to dispatch troops to Saudi Arabia, in line with the kingdom’s efforts to crush the Yemeni people, as the last nail on the Saudi regime’s coffin.
Saudi Arabia, which initiated its aggression against Yemen’s Houthis solely on religious motivations, has been trying to create a mass Islamic-Arab front against them and conducted long discussions with officials from Egypt, Sudan, Jordan, Indonesia, Turkey, and Pakistan in this regard.
To participate in the offensive, Egypt asked Saudis a massive financial aid, a requested that was rejected by Riyadh as the sum proposed by Egypt was too much.
Indonesia and Sudan also refrained from participating in the coalition while Turkey also revised its policy concerning dispatching troops to Saudi Arabia after a recent trip by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Tehran.
Negotiations between Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his Turkish counterpart helped Turkey realize the dangerous consequences of a military intervention alongside Saudi troops; therefore, Turkish troops were never dispatched to Saudi Arabia.
Moreover, Pakistan, which was initially offered to receive a $10 billion financial aid from Saudi Arabia, revised its decision after a trip by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to Islamabad.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who holds amicable ties with Saudi Arabia, also threw the ball into the court of the parliament. The parliament then drafted a bill, forbidding Islamabad to send troops to Saudi Arabia to help it crack down on the Yemeni people.
Diplomatically thus, the Saudi regime faced a heavy defeat, which was the fruit of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s dynamic and successful policy.
Although the Saudi regime had previously faced yet another political defeat regarding the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the 5+1 group of major world powers, its latest defeat brought it military failure in Yemen as well.
In the course of talks between Iran and the 5+1 group, the Saudi regime formed an Arab-Hebrew front to sabotage the negotiations. Its plot, however, failed thanks to Iran’s successful diplomacy.
For the first three weeks after the start of the Yemeni crisis, Saudi Arabia tried to exterminate the Yemeni Ansarullah movement through airstrikes in close coordination with Israel. The airstrikes; nevertheless, victimized Yemeni children and women more than damaging the Ansarullah movement.
Saudi Arabia, which had deployed six infantry and armored divisions to the Yemeni borders, had awaited the entry of Turkish, Egyptian, and Pakistani troops for a final assault on the Yemeni soil. However, due to the collapse of the envisioned Islamic-Arab coalition against Yemen, it could not enter the Yemeni soil on its own and faced a total defeat. Saudi troops are still stationed along the Yemeni border for their fear of engaging into a guerilla war with Yemen’s Ansarullah revolutionaries.
Therefore, regional military and political experts hold the idea that the Saudi regime has faced a grave defeat in the Yemeni crisis both politically and militarily. Besides, the regime’s airstrikes against the innocent civilians of Yemen has added to the global resentment of the regime.
tehran times : Saudis’ political and military defeat in Yemen
