WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 25th September, 2018) Germany approved a weapons package to support the Saudi-led coalition's war in Yemen because the United States and the Israel lobby dictate middle East security policy to European states, analysts told Sputnik.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has overruled staff objections to continued US weapons sales for the Saudi-led air campaign against Yemeni rebels after being warned that an embargo could jeopardize $2 billion in arms sales to United States' Persian Gulf allies, according to published reports last week.
Pompeo certified, as required by US law, that the Saudi-led coalition was taking steps to minimize civilian deaths - a step that allowed the United States to continue providing military aid.
In Germany, Economics Minister Peter Altmeir has also approved arms sales to Saudi Arabia after the ruling coalition agreed to end deliveries to countries involved in the Yemen war, local media said.
ISRAEL BACKS SAUDI-LED COALITION IN YEMEN
Israel backs the Saudi coalition in the Yemen war and is determined that the United States goes on supplying those nations with the munitions to fight it in order to combat Iran, which strongly backs the Palestinians, University of Louvain political philosopher Professor Jean Bricmont said.
"At bottom, there is a geopolitical motivation [for arming Riyadh]: The Saudis are opposed to Iran because of the Sunni-Shi'ite conflict and Iran supports the Palestinian cause, which makes the Saudis de facto allies of Israel," he said.
The Saudis were able to count on their Israeli allies to help protect them in the United States from charges of killing so many civilians in Yemen air strikes, Bricmont explained.
"The influence of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States explains a great deal of the blindness of all US administrations toward the Saudis, that are in principle as far from proclaimed US ideals as one can be," he said.
Israel and Saudi Arabia shared implacable hostility to the governments of both Iran and Syria so both Israel and the US government turned a blind eye to Riyadh's appalling human rights record and continuing support of the most dangerous Islamist extremist groups, Bricmont observed.
"Supporting Iran and Syria, or worse, Hezbollah, is an Israel no-no and that is why the United States is in bed with this extraordinary feudal, anti-liberal, murderous and terrorist sponsoring regime of the Saudis, while complaining about human rights violations everywhere else," he said.
Although financial considerations and a craving for profits motivated many US arms sales policies, these motivations were over-ridden in key cases by other ideological considerations, Bricmont noted.
"In weapon sales, there is always one motivation: making money. Yet, countries don't sell weapons to everybody. Does the United States sell weapons to Venezuela, Cuba or Nicaragua? I don't think so. Would they sell weapons to the Hezbollah or to the Palestinians? Even less likely," Bricmont said.
Washington's willingness to put Saudi Arabia and Israel's interests before its own had led to growing contradictions and paradoxes in its unsuccessful Middle East policies, Bricmont pointed out.
"Theater of the absurd indeed," he concluded.
These disastrous policies were exacerbated by the continued conviction of US policymakers that they could order their allies around the world to bow to their will and do anything they wanted, University of Pittsburgh Professor of International Affairs Michael Brenner noted.
"On the arms sales to Saudi Arabia, it appears that the overriding factor is the willfulness of the Trump people who believe strongly in their privilege to dictate to allies," Brenner said.
This delusion was strengthened by the continued unnatural state of psychological dependence that all the major Western European nations still showed to Washington, Brenner observed.
"Psychological dependence on the United States is not limited to Germany... It pervades all Western Europe capitals. The dismaying truth is that 70 years after [World War II], and 27 years after the end of the Cold War, Europe's political elites are psychologically incapable of standing up to Washington," Brenner said.
This continuing state of affairs explained the lack of follow-up to pledges made in the Minsk II Accords, Brenner explained.
It also accounted for European lack of action on "Syria where the US has been in a de facto coalition with al-Qaeda [and on] Iran - where the EC [European Commission] vows to protect European businesses from being blackmailed by Trump, and now Saudi Arabia," Brenner said.
In the absence of any articulate opposition, European leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and others could get away with such "craven behavior" without paying an electoral price, Brenner added.
